SPEECHES 



OF THE 



on} Jefferson Davis, 



o i^ 3V!: X s s I s s I :pi»i 



DELIVERED DUllING THE SUMMER OF 1838: 



Oil Fvurih of Jiihj^ I'iijS, at *SVa. 

At Serena'lf, at Portland^ Mahir.. 
" Portland Convention^ " 
" Belfast E^uampinent^ " 
" Banimt, 



At Portland Meeting, JIain\ 
" Fair at Augusta^ " 
" Faneiiil Ha.ll^ Boston. 
" NtLu York Mtttincj. 
Bfore Mississippi Legislature. 



&c. &c. 



Baltimore . , . Printed by John Murphy k Co. 

MAKilLii: Bl'lI.DI.VU, 182 Baltimoue stkeet. 

1859. 



/•aw 



/ have heen induced by tJie iwrsistent misre'presenta- 
Hon of popular Addresses made by me at the North 
and the South during the year 1858, to collect them., 
and ivith extracts from speeches made by me in the 
Senate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected 
form; to the end that the case may be fairly before 
those by ivhose judgment I am ivilling to stand or fall. 

JEFFERSON DAVIS. 






^ 



» 



e-.^-V r 



C*? 



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EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES IN II. S. SENATE. 



In the Senate of the United States, May «, 1850, in presenting the ResoUitions of 
the Legislature of Mississippi: 

It is my opinion that justice will not be done to the South, unless from other 
promptings than are about us here— that we shall have no substantial conside- 
ration offered to us for the surrender of an equal claim to California. No 
security against future harassment by Congress will probably be given. The 
rain-bow which some have seen, I fear was set before the termination of the 
storm. If this be so, those who have been first to hope, to relax their enero-jes, 
to trust in compromise promises, will often be the first to sound the alarm when 
danger again approaches. Therefore I say, if a reckless and self-sustaining 
majority shall trample upon her rights, if the Constitutional equality of the 
States is to be overthrown by force, private and political rights to be borne down 
by force of numbers, then, sir, when that victory over Constitutional rights is 
achieved, the shout of triumph which announces it, before it is half lUtered, 
will be checked by the united, the determined action of the South, and every 
freeze will bring to the marauding destroyers of those rights, the warning: woe, 
vvoe to the riders who trample them down ! I submit the report and resolutions' 

ind ask that they may be read and printed for the use of the Senate ( Cono-' 

Globe, p. 943-4.) ' ^ o- 



In the Senate of the United States, June 27, 1850, on the Compromise Bill: 
If I have a superstition, sir, which governs my mind and holds it captive, it 
is a supei-stitious reverence for the Union. If one can inherit a sentiment, I 
inay be said to have inherited this from my revolutionary father. And if educa- 
tion can develop a sentiment in the heart and mind of man, surely mine has 
been such as would most develop feelings of attachment for the Union. But, 
sir, I have an allegiance to the State which I represent here. I have an alle- 
giance to those who have entrusted their interests to me, which every consid- 
eration of faith and of duty, which every feeling of honor, tells me is above all 
other political considerations. I trust I shall never find my allegiance there and 
here in conflict. God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to 
my constituents is to be hostile to the Union. If, sir, we have reached that 
hour in the progress of our institutions, it is past the age to which the Union 
should have lived. If we have got to the point when it'is treason to the United 
States to protect the rights and interests of our constituents, I ask why should 
they longer be represented here? why longer remain a part of the Union? If 
there is a dominant party in this Union which can deny to us equality, and the 
rights we derive through the Constitution; if we are no longer the freemen our 
fathers left us; if we are to be crushed by the power of an unrestrained 
majority, this is not the Union for which the blood of the Revolution was shed ; 
this is not the Union I was taught from my cradle to revere; this is not the 
Union in the service of which a large portion of my life has been passed ; this 
is not the Union for which our fathers pledged their properly, their lives, and 
sacred honor. No, sir, this would be a central Government, raised on the 
destruction of all the principles of the Constitution, and the first, the highest 



¥/ 



obligation of every n.nn who ha. sworn to support that ConMiiution wokIcI be 
^'t;"coi;^.;:::^'^r;rrn--;e;;U^":;:f; or M,ss,ss.ppi as ar.,en,ly 

. nred 1. ev will never reach it until i. has he.,, tw.e and -1''- ', ,, . 
ju:;;;?;:! II, wh.. .bus mHy warrant^Uhey -');/ ^^ -' J^'^^" '" "' '^'"'^ 
or a better, 1 am at their conniiand.-( to/-g-. C^l<'bi, p. .'J>0 ; 



ON FOURTH OF JULY, ]8r>S AT SEA. 

[From the Boston I'ost.] 

^^l^n^I^^^ts; hn,;;;; "; rav of p-..- -■..^^;';:- ^^-;:-^ 

r- r'^he ea, .;nniversarv.met with a heartv resp.n.se from the company, 

!nrv^hoT were zealous republicans, democr.is and Amencans. A eon.- 

^ "^ :!::%:^Z^tl..i' the senator to make an address, antl he eon- 

''fI^^; the Declaration of Independence was read hv ^'^l?-'-" .^X^"";;;";;:. 
E^a of Bait more, wh. n Senator Davis n>atle an a. dress t.t singular lehc y ot 
J^ .nor, and pass oned eloquence, a.id oi s.ich a character as to eo.nmand I e 
a ,r .ton of ho^^e wiio listened to it. He commence,! by hapin alloMuns t 
? r- T^v ol be ty and intellicxence that sto -d beN.re him Irom a I paris ol ou 

E SS; fr-;;;;t:*Li'':,r:i-.::;:r"f^ 

r:fhe,™ft"/» i;,;r,,;l;;;l,wave » w,*,.,,,^ u,M ,., c„,„e ,„ ,l>e ,»c,0,.„> 

/ hdella— tu'^ilives Irom political opjiression. , 

Sel a..)r ); vis dwelt a sonu- hnioth on the right ol search quesnon-o. he 

f;:,:,,«i:V"o,u,:,'-Ke we°,ad enjoyed in .vory and o,l,.r produ.,. on >Ue 



con<;t of A''rii';i. The l.'iU' outraLfes in the Gulf found us, as a pPopl(=', with 
cloiuestic qiiarr^'Non ixir liaii.is : Inn i*' ihis p(nvpr couiiled on existuig ilivisioiis 
and oil uialvina ilieui wiiler. ihe tf^-^uli sliowed liovv great was lipr einir. The 
iiisuli was respulpd hy a uniied pfopln ; ihr Snnatf . as one uian, li'aj)P(l up 
air;i list British (jiet^nsions ; wliile Eiiiriand. as suddenly, astonishf'd. wiihdrcw 
her [iretPiisions. The claim she so louix preferred i.s yiven up — entirely ahaii- 
dou'i. 'I'lie saiup spirit that resented insult in the past vvdl resent ii in the 
future. I stand, said ilie Senator, suhstantialiv on the deck of an Anierifaa 
v^'s<^■l ; it IS ^niPrjcan soil ; the Ainerifau Hat£ floits over it ; its rii^ht to course 
the ocean pattiway is perfect. When the hlue firmauipnt reHecled its •nvn 
color ill t'le sea, it was the unappropriated pripeity o' iriiinkiiid ; and ii was 
arrocaiil and idle lor any nation to deny to ihe (jniied States her lull enjowuent 
of thiscouimnii properly. Il was for the lull and undisiurhpLl enjoyun nt of this 
rijjlit iliai our lathers, when rtiucli le<s prefiared for war than we are now, 
eiiira^ed in the confii<M of 1812; and fortius riijlil wp were ready to siriUe in 
18-5S. Let a foreifjii power, un ler any pretence whatever, insult the Auierican 
flair, and it will find ihat we aie not a divided ppopip, hut that a iniijlity arm 
wdl he raised to smite down the insulter. and this great country will continue 
united. 

IViJl lis: politicians in the South, or in llie Morth. or in ihp West, iiiav con- 
tinue to talk otherwise, but it will he of no avail. They are hke the mosijimoes 
around the ox: tiiey aiuidv, but they canmit wound, and never kill. Tlu'ie 
was a com iion interest which run throuorh all the divprsihed occupations and 
various [jroducis of these sovereit;n States ; liiere was a common semimeiit of 
nationality which beat in every Auierican bosom; there were common memc)- 
ries sweet to us all. ai)d, though clouds had occasionally daikened our political 
sky. the giiod sense and the good teeling of the people had tlitis far averted any 
catastrophe destructive of our consiitutioii and the Union. It was in traternily 
and an elevation of principle which rose su|>erior to sectional or individual 
aguraiidizemeiii ihat the foundations of our Unitni were laid; and ii we, the 
present generation, be worthy ol our ancestry, we sliall not only protect those 
foundations Irom destruction, but build higher and wider this temple of liberty, 
and inscribe perpetuity upon its tablet. 

In the course of iiis beautiful speech. Senator Davis passed a noble euIo<riuin 
on our mother country; and dwelt on ilie many reasi us why the most conli;.! 
friendship sliould be maintained with her; and lie coiicluiied by a tribute to ihe 
fair sex — the women — beautiful woman ; to the wondrous educational influence 
as the mother which she exercised over the niiniis ol men. It is ever, at iill 
times, leit and operative — upon the dreary waste of ocean, on tlie lonely pianie, 
in the troublous contests at the national halls. And wlien the arm is movi d in 
the deadly conflicts ol'the battle-held, and the foe is vanquished, then the gentle 
influences instilled by women do their woik, and the heart melts into tears of 
pity and prompts lo deeds of mercy. 

After this intellectual repa-t, then succeeded congratulations ; the air was 
made vocal with song ; while, through the loresiirht ol the gallant captain, ai the 
evening hour, the sky about the good ship .Joseph Whitne\ was brilliaiii wuh 
those various pyrotechnic displays which must be so grateful to tliespiiilof 
patriotic John Aciams, ol bonfire and illuminutiou-meniory. 



SPEECH AT THE PORTLAND SERENADE, 

July ^th, 185 8. 

After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and as soon as 
the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided, he spoke in sub- 
stance as follows: 

Fellow Countrymen: — Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation ot 
your i;indness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose 
as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not less gratit'yina: to 
me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an expression of 
regard to her sister Mississippi. It is moreover, with feelings of profound 
gratification that I witness this indication of that national sentiment and frater- 
nity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one people. At a period, 
but as yesterday when compared with the life of nations, these States were 
separate, and in soms respects opposing colonies; their only relation to each 
other was that of a common allegiance to the government of Great Britain. 
So separate, indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when Gen. Stark, of 
Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the head waters of the Ken- 
nebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albnny where they went to sell 
furs, and again led away a captive, without interference on the part of the in- 
habitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain his release. United 
as we now are, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of hostility to our 
country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world, whether on land or 
sea, the people of each and every State of the Union, with one heart, and with 
one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother's 
blood cried to us from the ground. Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the 
justice with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation and 
blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that 
shoulder to shoulder they entered on the trial of the revolution, step with step 
trod its thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence and 
founded the constitutional representative liberty, which is our birthright. 

When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in disregard 
of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did not stop to measure 
the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether the pressure bore most upon 
this colony or upon that, but saw in it the infraction of a great principle, the 
denial of a common right, in defence of which they made common cause; 
Massachusetts, Virginia and South Carolina vieing with each other as to who 
should be foremost in the struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dis- 
honorable grave. 

Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the revolution, dignified by its noble 
purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to each other by its glorious 
memories, they abandoned the conl'ederacy, not to fly apart when the outward 
pressure of hostile fleets and armies were removed, but to draw closer their 
embrace in the formation of a more perfect union. By such men, thus trained 
and ennobled, our Constitution was formed. It stands a monument of principle, 
of forecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made eacii willing to sacrifice 
local interest, individual prejudice or temporary good to the general welfare, and 
the perpetuity of the Republican institutions which they had passed through 
fire and blood to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for the 
functions of the general agent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, 
blessing both him who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary 
for domestic government, requisite in the social organization of each commu- 
nity, was retained by the Stales and the people thereof; and these it was made 
the duty of all to defend and maintain. 



Such^ in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed 
to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart 
responds, and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed. It but re- 
quires that each should attend to that which most concerns him, and on which 
alone he has rightful power to decide and to act. That each should adhere to 
the terms of a written compact and that all should cooperate for that which 
interest, duty and honor demand. For the general affairs of our country, both 
foreign and domestic, we have a national executive and a national legislature. 
Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their 
acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the Avhole people. He 
who holding either seat would confine his investigations to the mere interests of 
his immediate constituents would be derelict to his plain duly; and he who 
would legislate in hostility to any section would be morally unfit for the station, 
and surely an unsafe depositary if not a treacherous guardian of the inheruance 
with which we are blessed. 

No one, more than myself, recognizes the binding force of the allegiance 
which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a 
party to our compact, a member of our union, fealty to the federal Constitution 
is not in opposition to, but flows from liie allegiance due to one of the United 
States. Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at Boston; 
nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their several 
States, by their campaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his 
own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her lame free 
from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations, and to fulfil her 
duties to her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by the names 
and the deeds of those who have well understood, and discharged the obligation. 
Have we so degenerated, that we can no longer emulate their virtues ? Have 
the purposes for which our Union was formed, lost their value? Has patriot- 
ism ceased to he a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a 
crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South 
has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the 
world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the 
United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact, that the industry and per- 
severing intelligence of the North, has placed her mechanical skill in the front 
ranks of the civilized world — that our mother country, whose haughty minister 
some eighty odd years ago declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the 
colonies, which are now the United States, was brought some four years ago to re- 
cognize our pre-eminence by sending a commission to examine our work shops, 
and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite lor 
their defence? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, 
East, and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and 
the courage of the Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears 
its foam, and caused the name and the character of the United States to be 
known and respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce, and 
intelligence enough to honor merit? So long as we preserve, and appreciate 
the achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Ham- 
ilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored lor the whole country, 
and lived for mankind, we cannot sink to the petty strife which would sap the 
foundations, and destroy the political labric our fathers erected, and bequeathed 
as an inheritance to our posterity forever. 

Since the formation of the Constitution, a vast extension of territory, and the 
varied relations arising therefrom, have presented problems which could not 
have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration — even wonder, that the 
provisions of the fundamental law should have been found so fully adequate to 
all the wants of government, new in its organization, and new in many of the 
principles on which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as 
to the consequences of territorial expansion, must give way before the evidence 
which the past affords. The general government, strictly confined to its dele- 
gated functions, and the States left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we 



8 



havpn ihporvnnd prartifp which fits our sjovernnnpnt for immeasiirahle doni.'iin, 
find iiiiijhl, undfr a uiillpiiiiiimi ol nations, prnhraop mankind. 

From ilip slopp of ihn Atlantic our populaiion with cpasp|pss tidp has pourpj 
into tlip widp and fpriilp valley of'tlip l\!ississip|)i, with pddyin>r whirl has passed 
to the coiist of ihp Pa' i(i<'. !rom the W'pst and lliP East ilip tides are rushing 
towanis eacli (Jliier — and the mind is carried to ihedav whpn ail (he cuinvalde 
land will be inhahiied, and tiipAmPncan people will siijh lor more wddernesst s 
to conquer. Butihereis Ik re a pliysiropolincal prohhnn [iresentpd tor our solu- 
tion. Were it was purplv physical — your pa-i triumphs wouKi l<-ave hui liiile 
doubt of your capacity lo solve ii. 

A communiiv, which, when less ilian twenty thousand, conceived the grand 
project o! crossing the VVliire Mountains, and. unaided, save by the stimulus 
which jeers and proj^hecjes of hiilure gave, successfully executed the liPr( uleart 
worlv, might well be impatient, if it were suggested that a phv"-ii'al p obleni 
was belore us. too diflicult for ilieir mastery. The history of man learlies iliat 
high vnounlains and widp dpserts havp resisted the pprmatiput pxiposiou of 
empirp, and havp fornipd the immuiabjp boundaries of Siatps. From time in 
ti^iiP, under some able leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of A-ia swe[)t 
over ihe adjacent country, and rolled their conqueriiiii columns over SouiIk rn 
Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few irenerations. the physical law tv) wiiich [ 
have referred, has asserteil us supremacy, and the b lundaries of those Slates 
differ little now from those wl)ich obiained ihree ihoiisand years ago. IJome 
flew her conqiierins eagles over the hen known world, and lias now subsided 
into the littip iprniory on which hpr great city was originally built. Tlie Alps 
and the Pyrenees have bepn unable lorpstrain impprial Francp ; but lipr expan- 
sion was a levprish action; iier aiivance and her reireai were tracked wiih 
blood, and those mountain ridgps are the re-esiablished limits of lipr empire. 
Shall thp Rocky Mountains prove a dividin<r barrier to us ? Were ours a central 
consolidated government, insiead of a Union of sovereign States, our faie might 
be lenrned Irom the hisiory of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and iiide- 
[)enileni s[)irit ol our forefathers, this is not our case. Each Stale havma sole 
chaiyp of its loi'al interests and domestic affairs, the problem which to others 
lias been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe. a. id easy communication 
between the Ailanticand the Pacific, will ijive co-inleliigpncp, unity of inleipst, 
and co-operaiion among all pans of our conlinent-wide re|)ublic. The network 
of lailroads whndi bind ihe North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic and 
tlip vallpy of the Mississippi, together testify that our people have the power 
to perlorm, in thai regard, whatevpr it is their will lo do. 

VVp require a railroad to ihe Slates of tlie Pacific for prpsent uses; the time 
no doubi will come when vve shall have need of two or three; it may fie more. 
Because of the desert cUaraiMer o! tlie mierior eountry tiip work will beditlicult 
and expensive, it will require iheefloris ol an united ppo[)le. l"he bickerings 
Ol litlie politicians, ihe jealousies of sections, must give way to dignity cd' [)ur- 
pose and zeal lor the C(j n aon good. If Ihe object be obstructed by contenimn 
and division as to whether the route to be selectpd shall be norihprn, soul hem 
or central, ihe handwriimg is on the wall, and ii requires liiile skill to see that 
failure is the iiiti^rpreiatioii of the inscription. You are a practical people and 
may ask, how is ihai coniest to he avoided ? By taking the question out of the 
hands of |)oliiicians altogether. Lei the Governmeni give such aid as it is proper 
ior It to render to the (,'onipany which shall propose the niosi fpasible and 
aovaniageous plan ; then leave to capitalists with judgment sharpened by 
inierest, the selection of the route, and ihe diiiiculties will diminish as did ihose 
winch you overcame when you connected your harbor with the Canadiaa 
Pi ovin res. 

It would be to trespass on your kindness and to viidate ihe proprieties of ihe 
occasion, were I lo detain ihe vast concourse which stands belore me, by enter- 
ing on ilie discussion of controverted topics, or by further indulging in the 
exjiressiun of such relleclions as circumstances suggest. 



9 

T came to your city in qnes't of lipalili ami rei)')st\ Fioni iIip luoiiu'iit I 
enlcred it you liave sliovvpred upon me kiia.ncss aiid liospiialii) . '1 hm ii!i my 
ex[)<-n.iice has tauglit me to aiiucipaie guod railiPi iliaii ivil ircuii m\ Itlinw 
iiiHii, it liad not prep:ired me to ex|)ecl l^uch uim uiituii;; aiU'iilu.n as liais lu te 
bf-eii beslowed. 1 liave been juoulaiiy nsKed in iciamii lo mv comini; Ik i< . 
wiieitier I had secured a guaraniy tor my ^a(i\,and lo. I liave louiid i . I 
stand III the midst oi ihousands ol'mv lelluw cu,zc lis. liut my lr:e!ids. 1 came 
neither disirusiinff, nor apprehensive, ol wiii( h \. u have proof in the lact lliat 
1 brought willi me ihe uhjecisot K ndertst alVcction and solnitudt — my wife and 
my cliildren; tliey have siiared wiih me your liospiiahty, and will alike remain 
your dchiors. It ai some fuiure lime, wlien 1 am mingled wiih tlie dusi, and 
the arm ot my infant son has been mnved lor deeds ol manhood, lliei^torm of 
war should burst upon your city, 1 feel that, relying: upon his inheriting the 
jnstimts ol his ancestors and mine, 1 may pledjie hiin in ihal perilous liom to 
siand by your side in the delenceof your hearth stones, and in maintaining Hie 
honor ol a Hag whose conslellaiion though t(jrii and smoked in many a haitle. by 
sea and land, has never been stained wiih dishonor, and will I trust lurever lly 
as free as the brei^ze which unfolds it. 

A siraiiger lo you, the saluhriiy of your locaiion and the beauty of ns scenery 
were not wholly unknown lo me, nor were there wanting associations whi< h 
busy memory connected with your people. You will pardon me lor alluumg 
to one Whose genius shed a iusire u()on all it touched, and whose qualm, s 
gathered about him hosts of Iriends. wherever he was known. Puniiss, a 
niiiveof Portland, lived from youth to middle age in the county ol my resi- 
dence, and ihe inquiries which have been made, show me that the youth excited 
tiie interest which the greatness ot liie man justilied. and ihal his memory thus 
remains a link to connect your home with mine. 

A cursory view, when passing through your town on former occasions, had 
impresseti me with the great advaniaijes ol your harbor, its easy entrance, its 
depiii, and its extensive accommodation lor shippin<;. Bm its advantages, and 
its lucilniesas they have been developed by closer inspection, have grown upon 
me u.itil I realize that it is no boast, hut ihe language of soher truth uliich m 
th ■ present stale of commerce pronounces them unequalled in any harbor ol our 
cuuiiirv. 

Aiilsurely no place could be more inviting loan invalid who sought a reliige 
from ihe heat of a southern summer. Here waving elms ofler him sluuud 
walks, and magnificent residences surrounded by flowers, (ill the mind wiih 
ideas ol comlort and of rest. If weary ot constant coniaci wiih his fellow 
men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the back ground of this grand 
ampimheaire, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow oi rock and cap 
oi snow upon the smiling helds beneath, and there in iis rt cesses may be lound 
as much of wildness. and as much oi solitude, as the pilgrim weary of the cares 
oi hie can desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious haihor. siudded with 
green islands of ever vary \u'4 light and shade, and enlivened by all the stirring 
evidences of commercial activity, oiler iiim the mingled charms ol busy lite and 
nature's calm repose. A few miles further, and lie may sit upon the quiet 
shore U) listen to the murmuring wave until the troubled spirit sinks to rest, and 
in (lie little sail that vanishes on tne illimitable sea, we may lind the typed the 
voyage which he is so soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he 
enioa'rks tor that better state which lies beyond the grave. 

Riohly endowed as you are by nature m all wtiich contributes to pleasure 
and to usefulness, the stranger cannot pass without pa\ing a tribute to the 
much which your energy has achieved tor y(jurseives. W heie else will one 
tiiid a more happy union of ma<rniticence and comfort, where better arrange- 
menis lo lacilitate commerce? Where so much of industry, with so litile noi.-e 
an-J bustle ? Wliere, in a phrase, so much effected in proporlion to the means 
employed ? We hear the puff of the engine, the roll of the wheel, the ring of 
tne axe, and the saw, but the stormy, passionate exclamations so olien mingled 
wall the sounds, are no where heard. Yet, neither these nor other things 



10 

which I have mentioned, attractive though they be, have been to me the chief 
charm which I have found among you. For above all these I place the gentle 
kindness, the cordial Avelconie, the hearty grasp, which made me feel truly and 
at once, though wandering far, that I was still at home. 

My friends, I thank you for this additional manifestation of your good will. 



SPEECH AT THE PORTLAND CO^WENTIOK 



On Thursday, August 24th, 1858, when the Democratic Convention had nearly 
concluded its business, a committee was appointed to wait on Mr. Davis, and request 
him to gratify them by his presence in the Convention. He expressed his willingness 
to comply with the wishes of his countrymen, and accordingly repaired to the City 
Hall. On entering he was greeted in the most cordial and enthusiastic manner. 
After business was finished, he proceeded to the rostrum, and, addressing the Con- 
vention, said: 

Friends, fellow-citizens, and brethren in Democracy, he thanked them for the 
honor conferred by their invitation to be present at their deliberations, and 
expressed the pleasure he felt in standing in the midst of the Democracy of 
Maine — amidst so many manifestations of the important and gratifying fact 
that the Democratic is, in truth, a national party. He did not fail to remember 
that the principles of the party declaring for the largest amount of personal 
liberty consistent with good government, and to the greatest possible extent of 
community and municipal independence, would render it in their view, as in 
his own, improper lor him to speak of those subjects which were local in their 
character, and he would endeavor not so far to trespass upon their kindness as 
to rel'er to anything which bore such connection, direct or indirect — and he 
hoped that those of their opponents who, having the control of type, fancied 
themselves licensed to manufacture facts, would not hold them responsible for 
what he did not say. He said he should carry with him, as one of the pleasant 
memories of his brief sojourn in Maine, the additional assurance, which inter- 
course with the people had given him, that there still lives a National Party, 
struggling and resolved bravely to struggle for the maintenance of the Constitu- 
tion, the abatement of sectional hostility, and the preservation of the fraternal 
compact made by the Fathers of the Republic. He said, rocked in the cradle 
of Democracy, having learned its precepts from his father, — who was a Revo- 
lutionary Soldier — and in later years having been led forward in the same 
doctrine by the patriot statesman — of whom such honorable mention Avas made 
in their resolutions — Andrew Jackson, he had always felt that he had in his 
own heart a standard by which to measure the sentiments of a Democrat. 
When, therefore, he had seen evidences of a narrow sectionalism, which sought 
not the good of the whole, not even the benefit of a part, but aimed at the 
injury of a particular section, the pulsations of his own heart told him such 
cannot be the purpose, the aim, or the wish of any American Democrat — and 
he saw around him to-day evidence that his opinion in this respect had here its 
verification. As he looked upon the weather-beaten faces of the veterans and 
upon the flushed cheek and flashing eye of the youth, which told of the fixed 
resolve of the one, and the ardent, noble hopes of the other, strengthened hope 
and bright anticipations filled his mind, and he feared not to ask the question — 
shall narrow interests, shall local jealousies, shall disrc-gard of the high purposes 
for which our Union was ordamed, continue to distract our people and impede 



11 

the progress of our government toward the high consummation which prophetic 
statesmen have so often indicated as her destiny? — [Voices, no, no, no! Much 
applause.] 

Thanks for that answer; let every American lieart respond no; let every 
American head, let every American hand unite in the great object of National 
development. Let our progress be across the land and over the sea, let our flag 
as stated in your resolutions, continue to wave its welcome to the oppressed, 
Avho flee from the despotism of other lands, until the constellation which marks 
the number of our States which have already increased from thirteen to thirty- 
two, shall go on multiplying into a bright galaxy covering the field on which we 
now display the revered stripes, which record the original size of our political 
family, and shall shed its benign light over all mankind, to point them to the 
paths of self-government and constitutional liberty. 

He here referred to the history of the Democratic party, and numbered among 
its glories the various acts of territorial acquisition and triumphs through its 
foreign intercourse in the march of civilization and National amity, as well as 
in the glories which from time to time had been shed by fiie success of our arms 
upon the name and character of the American people. He alluded to the recent 
attempt by some of the governments of Europe, to engraft upon National law 
a prohibition against privateering. He said whenever other governments were 
willing to declare that private property should be exempt from the rigors of war, 
on sea as it is on land, our government might meet them more than half way, 
but to a proposition which would leave private property the prey of national 
vessels and thus give the whole privateering to those governments which main- 
tained a large naval establishment in time of peace, he would unhesitatingly 
answer no. Our merchant marine constituted the militia of the sea — how 
effective it had been in our last struggle with a maritine power, he need not say 
to the sons of those who had figured so conspicuously in that species of war- 
fare. The policy of our government was peace. We could not consent to 
bear the useless expense of a naval establishment larger than was necessary for 
its proper uses in a time of peace. Relying as we had and must hereafter upon 
the merchant marine toman whatever additional vessels we should recjuire, and 
upon the bold and hardy Yankee sailor, when he could no longer get freight for 
his craft, to receive a proper armament, and go forth like a knight errant of the 
sea in quest of adventure against the enemies of his country's flag. 

He said our country was powerful for all military purposes, and if asked to 
compare her armies and her navy with those of the great powers of Europe, 
he would answer, that is not our standard History teaches that our strength 
is in the courage and patriotism, the skill and intelligence of our people. A part 
of the American army was before him, and a part of the American navy was 
lying in the harbor of their city. That army and that navy had fought the 
battles of the Revolution, of the "war of 1812" and of the war with Mexico, 
and would never be found wanting, whilst the patriotism of the earlier days of 
the Republic, proved a sufficient cement to hold the diflTerent parts of our wide 
spread and extending country together. He said that everything around him 
spoke eloquently of the wisdom of the men who founded these colonies — their 
descendants, who sat before him, contrasted strongly, as did their history and 
present power, starsd out in bold relief, when compared with those of the inhab- 
itants of Central and Southern America. Chief among the reasons for this, he 
believed to be the self-reliant hardihood of their forefathers who, when but a 
handful, found themselves confronted by hordes of savages, yet proudly main- 
tained the integrity of their race and asserted its supremecy over the descendants 
of Shem, in whose tents they had come to dwell. They preferred to encounter 
toil, privation and carnage, rather than debase their hneage and race. Their 
descendants of that pure and heroic blood have advanced to the high standard 
oi' civilization attainable by that type of mankind. Stability and progress, 
wealth and comfort, art and science, have followed their footsteps. 

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Cauca- 
sian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of iree 



12 

gfovprnment, bpraiisp Ihfy linve ropied tin m. To its hf^nefits thry have not 
atiainfil, b-^cau^e thai siaiidanl o' dvilizaiKni is alxivc ihur race. I'evolulK n 
sucreci's RcvoliiiKHi. and \\\h r()iiiiii\ ii)()urns ilijii some petty cIuhI' may 
Iriiiiiipli. and lhruni,'li a sixiy days' <;nveiiiiiieiil ape the mleis <d" ilie earih. 
Even now ll;p man'st ami slioiiaesi dI these AiiieririU) Republics, which weie 
l'aahi(jiied alier the inixiel i>\ our o\\ n. seems lo he toUerniii to a (all, and ilie 
world IS inqiiir iii,r n^ to who will ial;e |)Osst'Ssion ; 'ir. as prniecior, raise and 
lead a pi^oplf^ who liave shown iheiiiselves incoinpeteni lo govern ihemselvi s. 

He said our iailinrs laid llie loundation of Empire, and declared its j)urposes; 
to iheirsons it remained to couiplete their siipersnuciure The meims by which 
this en I was to Iv^ spcired w^^re simple and easy. It involved no harder task 
than thai each man should aiti iid to his own business, that no community 
should arroifantly assume lo mn-Tt'ere with the affairs of another — and thai all 
should be acliial(^d bv the noble euiulalion of promoiine the common <;;ood. and 
bv the iionorable oijligaiiun of tultiiiing the compact which iheir la'hers liad 
made. 

He then referred lo the commercial position of Maine, and spoke of her 
brightly unfotdmg pros|)ects of prosperity and srreatness. Many considen'd licr 
wealth to consist of her lorcsts. and thai ii^^r prosperity would decline when 
her tunb^'r was exliausted — hf^ held to a different opinion, and thoiighi iht-y 
might we!oon>e the day, whf^n the sombre shadows of ilie Pine ^ave plai'e to 
verdant pastures and fruittul fields. Was he asked, w hat then was lo liec( me 
of the interests of ship-building ? He would answer — lei it bechanced Ironj 
wood to iron. The skill to be arquin^d by a few years' experience, would at a 
fair price for iron, enable our ship builders to construct iron ships, which, taking 
into account their gr< aier capaciiv lor Ireighi and greater (!niabi!ity. ■\\cidci he 
chf^aper than vf^sseis of wt)0 I, even whilst timber was as abundanl as now ; — 
at least such was tiie information he had derived iiom persons well informed 
upon those subjects. 

He expressed the gratificaiion he felt for the courtesy of the Democracy in 
Maine, and doubted not that the Democracy of Mississip|)i would receive it, 
with fjifteful recognition, as evincing Iraiernal sentiment by kiminess done lo 
one of her sons, not the less a representaiive, because a humble uieuiber ot her 
Democracy. 



SPEECH AT BELFAST ENCAMPMEN^ 



About ten o'i;lock the troi^ps at the encampnoent being under arms, C'll. D^vis 
was esooried lo the <;rinuid «m(I reviewed them. He was liieii iiitrudui^ed to the 
tr<>i>()s hy Gen. Cusliman, as fullnw.s — 

Olficer.s Hnd fellow .soldiers, [ iiitr.idnce to ya C"|. .Tefferson Davis, an eminent 
citizen of Mississippi, — a niaii, and I say a iitro, who lui.s, in the service of hi3 
country, l)eeii among and faced Imstile guns. 

Col. D.wis replied as follows — 

CiTiziiN SoLuiEiis;— I ft el pleased and gralitied at the exhibition I have wit- 
nessed of the military spirit ;uid msiruction ot the volunteer imlitia ot Maine. 
i acknowledge the compliment which lias been paid to me, and I welcome it as 
the indication of the hberahiy and national seniimenl which makes ihe mibtia 
ct each 8iate llie effective, ;is they are the coiisliluiional defenders ot our 
whole country. 

To one who loves iiis country in all ils parts, it is natural to rejoice m what- 
ever conlribules to ihe prosperity and honor, and marks the stability and pro- 



18 

gress of any poriion of its ppoplp. I iluie ore look upon tiie pvidenop prpspnieil 
to tup o( ilip soldierly pnihiimasm mui imlilnry ;i('(|mt( nicnis (lisplayeii (^n iliis 
occnsion, with none the Ip.-s plpasiup ljpcau>e I aui the cii./i n ol' aiioilipr and 
di.stani ("State. It- was not tlie policy ui our yovpinnimi to nut main large aiinirs 
or navies in time of peace. The histoi\ ol our pa^i wars estalilisheJ the hict 
thai it was not needlul to do so 'I'ln- militia lia : Ix i n luund i qiial to all llie 
enierifencies ol' war. Tiieir pairiotisiu, i i-ir iiiiellii;> nee. iheii kiio\vl((ii;e of 
the u>.e of arms, had given to them ail Un- ( (iicn i,(\ o, vt tt r; ns. and on many 
bloody lields they have shown their Mitxiioriu over the liisciplined imops of 
(heir enemies. A people morally and inielh ciiiallv equal lo >rli-governiiietit, 
must also he equal to .sell-delencc. \ y t' ien-.'s, vi'iir woiihy General has 
alluded lo my connection with the miliiar\ vervin- dl the CLiiiiiry. '1 he 
memory arose to mysell when the ii' dj.s ilns ('a\ ii.;iirhe(! pa-i mt , ami when 
) looked upon their maiiK hearintr aiiii lirm step, i thi^t^'hi « (Hikl I have xeea 
them thus approaching the last tield oi halile on w Iik h I m rved, where the 
changing tide several time> threainird disa.-ler to ihe Annrican lia^.wilii what 
joy I would have welcomeii ihos^ striped and starrt^d liaiiiK rs. the emhiein and 
the guitle of the free and ilie brave. hiuI wiih what piiie wi old the heart have 
beaten when welcoming lo danger's hour, fniinrn from so n luole an e.xtremity 
of our e.\()anded territory. 

One of the evidences o\' the fraternal ciitdidence and mutual reliance of our 
faUiers was to be found in their compart or mutual pKneciion and common 
defence. So long as then- sons preserve the spirit and appreciate ihe purpose of 
their fatUers, the United v*<tates will remain iiivincihle. their power will grow 
with the lapse of time, and their example show bnghier and brighter as rev(dv- 
ing aiiPs roll over the temple our laihers dedicated lo consiiiuiional hberty, and 
k)unded upon truths announced to iheir sons, but intended (or mankind. I 
thank you, citizen soldiers, lor this act ol couittsy. |i will long and giatefully 
be remembered, as a token id' respect to the distant 8iate ol which I am a citizen, 
and I trust will be noted by others, as indicating that u-.tU" ., ,1 ninnenl which 
made, and which alone can preserve us a naiiop 



BANQUET AFTER EACAAll\\]ENT AT BELFAST. 

Thk Mayor, then ?ave: 

The heroe.*! who lime ronghl our country's battles: may their services be appre- 
ciated by a ^raiet'id people. 

Loud calls being made for Col. JK^F^ hso\ Davis, ihnt fienliemim arose and .said: 

The sentiment to which he was called to r< s[)ond exciied memories which 
called up |)roud emotions, though then- assuciaiiutis W( le sad. He could not 
reply to a compliment paid to the gallantry of his cmnrades in the war with 
Mexico, wilhout remembering how many of them now niingle witli the dust 
ol a t()reign land, and how many of them have sunk n'ter the day of toil was 
done by reason of the exposure en lured in the service of their country. 'Ihe 
land has mourned, and still ni )iiriis, tlie tall of its bravest an I best, and truly 
are our ia ir^ls inin^^leJ with th'^ cvp^pss. 'tis well, and 'tis wise, 'tis natural and 
'tis proper, that in looking on the laurels of our glorv we should pause to p;>y a 
tribute to the cypress which weeps over them, and having paid this tribute to 
the gallant dpad, the memory of whose service can never die, we pass to the 
consideration of their acts, and the benehcjal results which their sacrifices have 
secured. When that war begun, our history recorded evidence only of the 
power of our people tor defence. The Kabian |)olicy oi V^'ashlng1on, admira- 
bly adapted to the condition ol the Colonies, achieved so much in proportiou to 



14 

the means, that he would be rash indeed who should attempt to criticise if. 
The prudent, though daring course of Jackson, fruitful as it was of the end to 
be attained, did not yet serve to illustrate the capacity of our people for the trials 
and the struggles auendant on the operations of an invasive war. Hence it 
was commonly asserted that the American people, though they might resist 
attack, were powerless to redress aggression which was not connected with the 
invasion of their territory. The idea of reliance upon undisciplined militia was 
treated with contempt and derision. To borrow a simile from the pit, we were 
regarded as dung-hill soldiers, who would only fight at home. In the v/ar with 
Mexico our armies carried their banners over routes hitherto unknown, through 
mountain passes where nature had almost completed the Avork of defence, and 
penetrated further mto the enemy's country than any European army has ever 
marched from the source of its supplies. Not to prolong the comparison by a 
reference to events of a remote period, he would only refer to the last campaign 
in European war. The combined armies of France and England, alter pre- 
paration worthy of their great military power, advanced through friendly terri- 
tory to the outer verge of the country, against which they directed a war of 
invasion, and after a prolonged seige by sea and by land, finally captured a sea- 
port town which they could not hold. Before ihem lay the country they had 
come to invade, but there, at the outer gate, their march was arrested, and in 
sight of the ships which brought them supplies and reinforcements, they termi- 
nated a campaign, the scale and proclaimed objects of which had caused the 
world to look on in expectation of achievements the like of which man had not 
seen. Why was it so? was it not that they were unable to move from the 
depot of supplies, though a distance less than half of that over which our army 
passed before reaching a productive region would have brought the allied forces 
to a country filled with all the supplies necessary for the support of an army. 
Is it boastful to say that American troops, and an American treasury, would 
have encountered and have overcome such an obstacle? He did not forget the 
complaints which had been made on account of the vast expenditures which 
had been made in the prosecution of the war with Mexico; but he remembered 
with pride the capacity which the country had exhibited to bear such expendi- 
ture, and believed that our people had no money standard by which to measure 
the duty of their government, and the honor of Iheir flag. We bear with us 
from the wars in which we have been engaged no other memory of their cost 
than the loss of the gallant dead. To the printed reports and tabular statements 
we must go when we desire to know how many dollars were expended. The 
successful soldier when he returns from the field is met by a welcome propor- 
tionate to the leaves which he has added to the wreath of his country's glory. 
Each has his reward; to one, the admiring listener at the hearthstone; to 
another, the triumphal reception : to all, the respect which patriotism renders to 
patriotic service. To the soldier who, in the early part of the Mexican war, 
set the seal of invincibility upon American arms, and subsequently by a signal 
victory dispersed and disorganized the regular army of Mexico, his countrymen 
voted the highest reward known to our government. Twice before have the 
people in like manner manifested their approbation and esteem. Thus has the 
military spirit of the country been nursed ; to-day it needs not the monarchial 
bundles of ribbons, orders and titles to sustain it. Thus has the American 
citizen been made to realize that it is sweet and honorable to die for one's coun- 
try ; and to feel proudest among his family memories of the names of those 
who successfully fought or bravely died in defiance of the national flag. Often 
he had had occasion to feel, and to mark the mingled sensation of pride and of 
sorrow with which friends revert to those who gallantly died in the field. Even 
at this now remote day he could not travel in Mississippi without having the 
recollection of his fallen comrades painfully revived by meeting a mother who 
mourns her son with the agony of a mother's grief; a father, whose stern 
nature vainly struggles to conceal the involuntary pang, or tender children who 
know not the extent of their deprivation, though it is indeed the sorest of all. 
Let none then be surprised that he could not see the laurel save through the 



15 

solemn shade of the cvpress. Time, however, softened the shadow Ions' hef'ore 
it withers the leaf. On his way to this phice he learned that it was possible, 
and he seized the occasion to visit the residence of Gen. Knox, of revolutionary 
memory. His own desire to see something which had been identified with a 
patriot soldier who had so largely contributed to the success of the revolution, 
and the establishment of the institutions we inherited, was but an indication of 
the military sentiment which lives in the American heart. It turns the step of 
the traveller from his direct path, it attracts the boy in his first reading, it tires 
the ambition of the youth, and encircles the veteran with the kindness of his 
neighbors, and swells the train which follows his bier when, his duty to his 
country performed, he answers the summons of his God, and is translated to a 
better sphere. It is that same military enthusiasm which calls you from the 
avocations and the pleasures of home to the duties and discomforts of the camp, 
that you may prepare yourselves whenever your country needs it to render her 
efficient service. On the militia of the country the rights of its citizens, and 
the honor of its flag, must mainly depend in the event of a war; they only 
need to be organized and instructed to render them a secure reliance. Mingled 
with the great body of the people, identihed v,fith their feelings and their interests, 
proud of the prowess of their fathers and jealousy careful of the country's 
honor, if properly instructed and prepared, the first trumpet call should bring 
from plain and from mountain a citizen soldiery who would encircle the land 
and check the invader with a wall of fire. Your plan of encampment seems 
best suited to the purposes of practical instruction. A. pilgrim in search of 
health, his steps had been fortunately directed to Maine, the courtesy of the 
commander of this encampment had induced him to visit it and to review the 
troops. In all respects it had been to him most gratifying. The appointments, 
the movements, the stern faces, and stalwart forms of the men, spoke of the 
power to do, and the will to dare whatever it was needful and proper to perform. 
This day to manifest respect to a citizen of a distant State, whose only claim 
upon them is that he has been an American soldier, and is an American citizen, 
they had cheerfully marched through heavy mire. So much had they given to 
so small a demand on their natural sentiment, he could not doubt they would 
with equal alacritv, and with the same firm step, march over a field miry with 
the blood of comrade and of foe, where opposing causes make to men a com- 
mon fate. 

Among the objects which were of interest to him and which he had hoped 
to visit, was the fortification at the narrows of the Penobscot. During the last 
session of congress he had endeavored to obtain an appropriation for the com- 
pletion of the work which had advanced to the point vi'hich made it eflfective 
against shipping, but left still liable to be carried by land attack. He was not 
of those who thought it necessary to raise walls wherever an enemy might land 
and march, for he would say that henceforward there would remain to an in- 
vading army but to choose between captivity and a grave. To protect com- 
mercial ports against naval assault forts are needful and should be completed so 
as to render them defensible by small garrisons, and to save those garrisons as 
far as possible from the sacrifice of life. Our people require no wall to separate 
them from other countries, unless it be needful for our own restraint. Our policy 
is peace, and the fact shines brightly on the pages of our history that not one acre 
of its extensive acquisitions have been claimed as the spoil of the sword. Un- 
peopled deserts have been purchased, and on its own application a community 
has been admitted to our family of states. But we have ofi'ered to the world 
the singular example of conquered territory returned to the vanquished. 

Permit me in this connection, whilst ever mindful of the just relation and 
necessity for concurrent action between the civil and military departments of 
government, to bear testimony to the value of the militia for the purposes of 
peace. The principle of self-government and the spirit of independence are so 
deep rooted in the American mind that our people would illy brook the enforce- 
ment of law by any extraneous power, and it is to be hoped we never will see 
a case in which the people of a State will not be able to maintain the civil 



16 

auihority, and vindicalp ofTf iidfd Inw agninst all opposf-rs whomsofn^pr. To 
f^ivp energy ;md acnvuy lo isuch popular action ihe organization ot ilie inilitia 
AVill be most convenient whenever force shall l)e iieeuiul. It is not a liliie re- 
markable thai thougli the lirsi Presideois in eiupliaiic language from lime lo 
tune rei'oinmended a tlmrough organization of the militia as one of llie most 
i'liporiant duties ol" itie government, but little more has yet been done than to 
make provisions lor supplying them with arms, and lor calling them out when 
required lor federal purjio-es. 'I'nere is a moral eliecl aiis ng froni the spectacle 
ol each iState possesseu oi a liniy ol' instructed militia, ready not only to main- 
tain its government ai hon.e. bin lo unite with the militia of other Stales and to 
form an army upon whnh all can r.-ly whenever a common danger calls for a 
common defence. It lias been thus that from time the fraiernity of our revolu- 
tinnarv aiheLs has been rem wed among iheir sons, and additional assurance 
has been i^iven that ihe seiitmi<ni of nationality on which our Union was 
founded could never die 'I'tiai ihe expansion ot the circle did not weaken its 
cohesive power, nor tlie j-dling of arch upon arch endanger the foundation on 
which our jiolitical lempb' was built. 

It wa-; noi a siruciure ol expediency; master workmen cleared away the sur- 
face waeiP the errors and prejudices ot ages had acciimulaied. dug deep down 
to the iinmutalde rock of truth, and wiih unchanging principles constructed 
the walls to siand till time should become eieriuty. Who is there, then, forget- 
ful of hi«; revolutionary descent, insensible to the pride which the name of the 
United rftates justly inspires, laithless to the duty which the bond of his fathers 
iinposes, and reckless of all wlncli the honorable discharge of that duty ensures, 
wo lid unite with impious purpo-^e to destroy that foundation, and strive, with 
sacrilegious liand to tear the Hair under which we had mnrclied Irom colonial 
dependence to our present national grealness. Away with speculative theories, 
and lalse philanihropy of absiractions, wIik h tend loi'esiroy one hall, one third, 
aye, or a s;ngle siar of that brighi constellation which lights the pathway of 
our i'uture (-areer, and sends a hopeful ray through the clouds ol despotism 
which hang (jver less lavored lands. 

Our mission is not ihat ol projiagandists— our principles forbid interference 
with the institutions .f oiher couniries; but we may hu()e thai our (xomple 
will be iruitaied, and should so live that this model ot representative liberty, 
community indepi ud' nee. and government derived from the consent ot the 
governed, and limiitd by a wriilen compact, should commend ilsell to the adop- 
tion of others. We now siaiid isolated among ilie gnat nations of the earth ; 
the opposition oi moiiarchial governments to the theory on which ours is 
foundKl. points to ilie pos^ib.biy oi an alliance against us. by which what is 
termed national law may b^ modifietl and warped to our prejudice il not to our 
assailiU'^nt. It neeiis the uniied power. haniKmious action and concentrated 
will of the people of all ihese Slates to roll the wheel ol progress to the end 
which our lathers coniemplated. and which their sons, if they are wise and 
true, may behold. May ihe kniilii'ss and courtesy which have character- 
ized the present occaMoii on which Mississippi has been greeted by Maine, be 
a ty[)e of the teeling which shall ever exist between the extremes of our com- 
mon country. From Florida to Calitornin, fr<nn Oregon to Maine, Irom the 
centre to the remotest bonier, may the possessors of our constitutional beniage 
apjirei-iate its value, and faithfully. Iralernally labor lor its thorough develop- 
ment, looking ba<d< to thf original compact for the purposes for which tlie 
Union vva>! esiablislied. and torward to the blessings which sucii union was 
designed and is competent lo cunier. 



SPEECH AT THE PORTLAND MEETING. 

When it became known that Mr. Davis had arrived at the Hail, lie was 
loudly called for. Hon. .Tosepli Howard, chairman of the nipptin^, then intro- 
dnced Mr. Davis, who, on coming forward, was greeted wifh cheer upon cheer 
from the vast audience. As soon as the prolonged and enlhusiastic applause 
with which he was welcomed had subsided, Mr. Davis, addr«\ssing the audience 
as fellow citizens and Democratic brethren, said that tlie invitation with which 
he had been favored to address them, evinced a pnr[)ose to conler together for 
the common good — for the maintenance of the consiitution, the bond of union. 
He would not be expected to discuss local questions ; he would not in this 
imitate the mischievous agitators who inllame the Northern mind against the 
Southern States. He came among them, an invahil, advised by his physician 
to resort to this clime for the restoration of his heal h ; as an American citizen, 
he had not expected that his right to come here would be questioned; as a 
stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent 
advocacy of the rights of the South had brought upon him, he had supposed 
that neither his coming nor his going would attract attention. But his antici- 
pations had proved erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted 
above the barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had 
chosen, without political distinction, to welcome his coming, and by constant acts 
of generous hospitality to make his sojourn as pleasant as his physical condition 
would permit. 

On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capital con- 
sists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, had erroneously 
judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as a political mission ; 
wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that the scavengers of that party had 
been employed in the publication of falselioods, both in relation to himself and 
his political friends at the South. 

So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more than the barking 
of a cur, which, by its clarnor, indicates the inhospitable character of the master 
who keeps him. If his friends and himself were, as had been falsely charged, 
Disunionists and Nullifiers, they might naturally have looked for kmder con- 
siderations from a party which circulates petitions for a " prompt and peaceful 
dissolution of the Union " on account of the incompatibility of the sections — 
from a party, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitu- 
tion in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and void 
the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to enact. The 
fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their honorable discharge 
of its obligations was their rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found 
the highest commendation in their power to bestow. 

By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words into extracts, 
they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his opinions, and had 
crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his was the creed on which 
the people of Maine must vote next Monday. 

It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their hands that he 
should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had not failed to remember 
the obligation ; Avhen republicans had introduced the subject of African slavery- 
he had defended it, and answered pharisaical pretensions by citing the Bible, the 
constitution of the United States and the good of society in justification of the 
institutions of the State of which he was a citizen ; in this he but exercised the 
right of a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southern citizen. Was it for 
this cause that he had been signalized as a slavery propagandist? He admitted 
in all its length and breadth the right of the people of Maine to decide the 
question for themselves ; he held that it would be an indecent interference, on 
the part of a citizen of another State, if he should arraign the propriety of the 
2 



18 

jadgmentthey had rendered, and that there was no rightful power in the federa! 
government or in all the States combined, to set aside the decision which the 
community had made in relation lo their domestic inslituiions. Should any 
attempt be made thus to disturb their sovereign risrhi, he would pledge himseir 
in advance, as a State-rights man, with his head, his heart and his hand, il'need 
be, to aid them in the defence of this riglit of cominunilv independence, wliich 
the Union was formed to protect, and wiiich it was the duty of every American 
citizen to preserve and to guard as the peculiar and prominent feature of our 
government. 

Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men to con- 
verse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or exclude them ? He 
trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of our brethren of 
the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here, to appreciate the true men 
of Maine, and to know how little are the political abolitionists and the abolition 
papers the exponents of the character and the purposes of the Democracy of 
this State. 

And now having brushed away the cob- webs which lay in his path, he would 
proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audience he had the 
honor to address. 

Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may be known, 
you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and to posterity. The time 
is at hand when for good or for evil, the questions which have agitated the 
public mind are lo be solved. Is it true as asserted by northern agitators that 
(here is such contrariety between the North and the South that they cannot 
remain united .' Or rather, is it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity 
in the character of the population, in the products and in the institutions of the 
several States formed a reason for their union and tended to secure to their 
posterity the liberty which was the common object of their love, and by culti- 
vating untrammeled intercourse and free trade between the States, to duplicate 
the comforts of all ? 

There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness to sever the 
bond which bound the colonies to the mother country. Recently our people 
with joyous acclamation have welcomed the connection of the United States 
with Great Britain, by the Atlantic cable. The one is not inconsistent with the 
other. When the home government violated the charters of the colonies, and 
assumed to control the private interests of individuals, the love of political 
liberty, the determination at whatever hazard to maintain their rights, led our 
fathers to enter on the trial of revolution. Having achieved the separation, they 
did what was in their power for the development of commerce. They secured 
free trade between tlie States, Avithout surrendering State independence. Their 
sons, not only free, but beyond the possibility of future interference in their 
domestic affairs, now seek the closest commercial connection with the country 
from which their fathers achieved a political separation. 

Had the proposition been made to consolidate the Slates after their independ- 
ence had been achieved, all must know it would have been rejected — yet there 
are those who now instigate you to sectional strife for the purpose of sectional 
dominion and the destruction of the rights of the minority. Do they mean 
treason to the Constitution and the destruction of the Union 7 Or do they vilely 
practice on credulity and passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested by 
the contradictory course they pursue. At the same time they proclaim war 
upon the slave property of the South, they ask for protection to the manufac- 
tures of the staple which could not be produced if that property did not exist. 
And while they assert themselves to be tlie peculiar friends of commerce and 
navigation, they vaunt their purpose to destroy the labor which gives vitality to 
both ; whilst they proclaim themselves the peculiar friends of laboring men at 
the North, they insist that the negroes are their equals ; and if they are sincere 
(hey would, by emancipation of the blacks, bring them together and degrade 
the white man to the negro level. They seek to influence the northern mind 
I)y sectional issues and sectional organization, yet they profess to be the friends 
of (he Union. The Union voluntarily formed by free, equal, independent Slates. 



19 

We of the Soulli, on a sectional division, are in the minority; and if legisla- 
tion IS to be directed by geographical tests — if the constitution is to he trampled 
in the dust, and the unbridled will of the majority in Congress is to he supreme 
over the States; -we should have the problem which was presented to our 
Fathers when the Colonies declined to be content with a mere representation in 
parliament. 

If the constitution is to be sacredly observed, why should there he a struggle 
for sectional ascendency ? The instrument is the same in all latitudes, and does 
not vary with the domestic institutions of the several States. Hence it is that 
the Democracy, the party of the constitution, have preserved their integrity, 
and are to-day the only national party and the only hope for the preservation 
and perpetuation of the Union of the States. 

Mr. Jefferson denominated the Democracy of the North, the natural allies of 
the South. It is in our generation doubly true ; they are still the party with 
whom labor is capital, and they are now the party which stands by the barriers 
of the constitution, to protect them from the waves of fanatical and sectional 
aggression. The use ol' the word aggression reminded him that the people here 
have been daily harangued about the aggressions of the slave power, and he 
had been curious to learn what was so described. It is, if he had learned cor- 
rectly, the assertion of the right to migrate with slaves into the territories of the 
United States. Is this aggression ? If so, upon what ? Not upon those who 
desire close association with the negro; not upon territorial rights, unless these 
self styled lovers of the Union have already dissolved it and have taken the ter- 
ritories to themselves. The territory being the common property of Slates, 
equals in the Union, and bound by the constitution which recognizes property 
in slaves, it is an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into that terri- 
tory ot one of its joint owners, because carrying with him any species of 
property recognized by the constitution of the United Slates. The Federal 
government has no power to declare what is property anywhere. The power 
of each State cannot extend beyond its own limits. As a consequence, there- 
fore, whatever is property in any of the Slates must be so considered in any 
of the territories of the United States until they reach to the dignity of commu- 
nity independence, when the subject matter will be entirely under the control of 
the people and be determined by their fundamental law. ' If the inhabitants of 
any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would 
give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less value- 
less, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it without such protection. In 
the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, 
the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. 
Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, itAvouId 
follow that the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the 
case, from taking slave properly into a territory where the sense of the inhabi- 
tants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the olt repeated fallacy of 
forcing slavery upon any community. 

If Congress had the power to prohibit the introduction of slave property into 
the territories, what would be the purpose? Would it be to promote emancipa- 
tion? That could not be the effect. In the first settlement of a territory the 
want of population and the consequent difficuhy of procuring hired labor, 
would induce emigrants to take slaves with them ; but if the climate and pro- 
ducts of the country were unsuited to African labor — as soon as white labor 
flowed in, the owners of slaves would as a matter of interest, desire to get rid 
of them and emancipation would result. The number would usuallybe so 
small that this would be effected without injury to society or industrial pursuits. 
Thus it was in Wisconsin, notwithstanding the ordinance of '87 ; and other 
examples might be cited to show that this is not mere theory. 

Would it be to promote the civilization and progress of the negro race? The 
tendency must be otherwise. By the dispersion of the slaves, their labor would 
be rendered more productive and their comforts increased. The number of 



20 

owners would be multiplied, and by more immediate contact and personal rela 
tion greater care and kindness would be engendered. In every way it would 
conduce to the advancement and happiness of the servile caste. 

No — no — it is not these, but the same answer which comes to every inquiry 
as to the cause of fanatical agitation. 'Tis for sectional power, and political 
ascendency ; to fan a sectional hostility, which must be, as it has been, injurious 
to all, and beneficial to none. For what patriotic purpose can the Northern 
mind be agitated in relation to domestic institutions, for which they have no 
legal or moral responsibility, and iVom the interference with which they are 
restrained by their obligations as American citizens? 

Is it in this mode tiiat the spirit of mutual supjjort and common effort for the 
common good, is to be cultivated? Is it thus that confidence is to be developed 
and the sense of security to grow Avith the growing power of each and every 
State? Is it thus that Ave are to exemplify the blessings of selfgovernment by 
the free exercise in each independent community of the power to regulate their 
domestic institutions as soil, climate, and population may determine? 

Among the questions Avhich have been made the basis of recent agitation, 
and has contributed as much, perhaps, as any other to popular delusion, was 
the act known as the Missouri Compromise. It Avill be remembered that the 
agitation of 1819 on the subject of slavery, AA\as not masked as it has been 
since, by pretensions of philanthropy — it AA'as an avoAA'ed opposition to the 
admission of a slave-hokling Stale. A long and bitter controversy Avas termi- 
nated by the admission of the State of Missouri, and the prohibition of slavery 
north of the parallel of 36 dog. 30 minutes. He, and those Aviih Avhom he 
most concurred, had always contended that Congress had no constitutional 
power to make the interdiction. But the people having generally acquiesced, 
the matter Avas considered settled; and AA'hen Texas, a slave-holding State, Ava.s 
admitted into the Union, Southern men, regarding the Missouri Act as a com- 
pact, assented to the extension of the line through the territory of Texas, Avith 
a provision that any State formed out of the territory north of 36: 30: should be 
non-slaveholding. But Avhen, at a subsequent period, Ave made extensive 
acquisitions from Mexico, and it was proposed to divide the territory by the 
same parallel, the North generally opposed it, and after a long discussion, the 
controversy Avas settled on the principle of non-interA^ention by Congress in 
relation to property in the territories. The line of the Missouri Compromise 
was repudiated. And a Senator Avho had been most prominent in denouncing 
the repeal ot the Missouri Compromise as a violation of good faith on the part 
of the South, in 1850, described it as a measure Avhich had been the grave of 
every Northern man who supported it, and objected to the boundary of 36: 30: 
for the territory of Utah, because of the political implication AA'hich its adoption 
would contam. 

The act having been thus signally repudiated by the denial in every form of 
the poAver of Congress to fix geographical limits Avithin Avhich slavery might or 
might not exist; Avhen it became necessary to organize the territories of Kansas 
and Nebraska, it Avas but the corollary of the proposition Avhich had been main- 
tained in 1850 to repeal the act Avhich had fixed the parallel of 36: 30: as the 
future limit of slavery in the territory of Louisiana. 

Consistency demanded so much ; fairness and manhood could not have 
granted less. He Avas not then a member of Congress; but if he had been, he 
should have voted for that repeal; for although in 1850 he had favored the 
extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, and believed 
that it Avould most conduce to the harmony of the Stales, he had yielded to the 
action of the Government, and considered the position then taken as conclusive 
against the retention of the line in Louisiana and Texas, Avhich its beneficiaries 
had refused to extend through the territories acquired from Mexico. As a 
general principle, he thought it Avas best to leave the territories all open. 
Equality of right demanded it, and the federal government had no poAA'er to 
withhold it. Whatever validity the Missouri Compromise act had, it derived 
from the acquiescence of the people. After 1850 then it had none. The 



21 

South had not asked Congress to extend slavery into the territories, and he in 
common with most Southern statesmen, denied the existence of any power to 
do so. He held it to be the creed of the Democracy, both in the North and the 
South, that the 'General Government had no constitutional power either to 
establish or prohibit slavery anywhere; a grant of power to do the one must 
necessarily have involved the power to do the other. Hence it is their poliry 
not to interfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individual in 
his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community to determine 
and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom may seem best. 

Politicians of the opposite school seemed to forget the relation of the General 
Government to the States; even so far as to argue as though the General Gov- 
ernment had been the creator instead of the creature of the States. He had 
learned that attempts had been made to impress upon the people of Maine the 
belief that they were in danger of having slavery established among them by 
decree of the Supreme Court of the United States. He scarcely knew how to 
answer so palpable an absurdity. The court was established, among other 
purposes, to protect the people from unconstitutional legislation; and if Con- 
gress, in the extreme of madness, should attempt thus to invade the sovereignty 
of a State, it would be within the power, and would be the dutv of the court, 
to check the airgression by declaring such law void. The court have, on more 
than one occasion, asserted the right of transit as a consequence of the guaran- 
tees of the Constitution, but it would require much ingenuity to torture the 
protection of a traveller or sojourner into an assertion of a right to become resi- 
dent and introduce property in contravention of the fundamental law of the 
State, or of a citizen to hold property within a State in violation of its constitu- 
tion and its policy. The error of the proposition was so palpable that, like the 
truth of an axiom, it could not be rendered plainer by demonstration. 

It is not within the scope of human foresight to see the embarrassments 
which may arise in the execution of any policy. When it was declared that 
soil, climate, and unrestrained migration should be left to fix the slatits of the 
territories, and institutions of the States to be formed out of them, no one pro- 
bablv anticipated that companies would be incorporated to transport colonists 
into a territory with a view to decide its political condition. Congress, as he 
believed, yielding too far to the popular idea, had surrendered its right of revision 
and thus had recently lost its power to restrain improper legislation in the terri- 
tories. From these joint causes had arisen ti\e unhappy strife in Kansas, which 
at one time threatened to terminate in civil war. The Government had been 
denounced for the employment of United States troops. Very briefly he would 
state the case. 

The movement of the Emigrant Aid Societies of the North was met by 
counteracting movements in Missouri and other Southern States. Thus oppos- 
ing tides of emigration met on the plains of Kansas. The land was a scene of 
confusion and violence. Fortunately the murders which for a time filled the 
newspapers, existed nowhere else ; and the men Avho were reported slain, 
usually turned up after a short period to enjoy the eulogies which their martyr- 
dom had elicited. But arson, theft and disgraceful scenes of disorder did really 
exist, and bands of armed men indicated the approach of actual hostilities. 
What was the Government to do? Perhaps you will say, call out the militia. 
But that would have been to feed and arm one of the parties for the destruction 
of the other. To call out the militia of neighboring States would have been 
but little better. The sectional excitement then ran so high, that they would 
probably have met upon the fields of Kansas as combatants, the government in 
the meantime furnishing the supplies for both armies. It was necessary 
to have a force — one which would be free from sectional excitement or partizan 
zeal and under executive control. The army fulfilled these conditions. It was 
therefore employed. It dispersed marauding parties, disarmed organized inva- 
ders, arrested disturbers of the peace, gave comparative quiet and repose to the 
territory, without taking a single life, aye, or shedding one drop of blood. The 
end justified the means, and the result equaled all that could have been antici- 
pated. 



22 

The anomalous condition of a territory possessins: full legislative power, but 
not invested with the sovereignty of a State, justified the anxiety exhibited by 
Congress to be relieved from the embarrassment which the case of Kansas pre- 
sented. The Senate passed a bill to authorize a convention for the preparation 
of a constitution for the admission of Kansas as a State. It however failed in the 
House of Representatives, and the legislature of Kansas, availing themselves 
of the plenary power conferred upon them by the organic act, proceeded to 
provide for the assembling of a convention, and the formation of a constitution. 
The law was-minute and fair in its provisions, so nearly resembling the bill of 
the Senate that the one was probably copied from the other. It seemed to secure 
to every legal voter every desirable opportunity to exercise his right. One of the 
parties of the territory, however, denying the legal existence of the legislature, 
chose to abstain from voting. The other elected the delegates who formed the 
constitution. Tlie validity of the instrument he has been denied, because it 
was not submitted for popular ratification. He held this position to be wholly 
untenable, and could but regard it as a gross departure from the principle of 
popular sovereignty. A people — he used the word in its strict political sense — 
having the right to make for themselves their fundamental law, may either 
assemble in mass convention for that purpose, or may select delegates and 
limit their power to the preparation of an instrument to be submitted to a 
popular decision ; or they may appoint delegates with full powers to frame the 
fundamental law of the land. Whether they adopt one mode or the other is a 
question with which others have no right to interfere, and he who claims for 
Congress the power to sit in judgment on the manner in which a people may 
form a constitution, is outside of the barrier which would restrain him from 
claiming for Congress the right to dictate the instrument itself. If the right 
existed to form a constitution at all, the power of Congress in relation to the 
instrument was limited to the simple inquiry : is it republican? In this view 
of the case it would not matter to him the ninety-ninth part of a hair whether 
a people should chose to admit or exclude slave propprty. Their right to enter 
the Union would be a thing apart from that consideration. 

He had felt great doubt as to the propriety of admitting Kansas, and had 
only yielded those doubts to the peculiar necessities which seemed to make the 
case exceptional. The inhabitants of the territory had however decided not to 
enter the Union upon the terms proposed, and he thought their decision was 
fortunate. They had not the requisite population ; their resources were too 
limited to give assurance that they would be able to bear the expenses of their 
government and properly to perform the duties of a State. But more than this, 
their legislative history shows that they are wanting in the essential character- 
istics of a community ; whichever party has had the control of the legislature, 
has manifested by its acts not a desire to promote the public good, and protect 
individual rights, but a purpose to war upon their political opponents as a hos- 
tile power. The political party with which he most sympathized had marked 
its legislation by requiring test oaths, offensive to all our notions of political free- 
dom ; and the other party had assumed to take from the territorial executive 
the control of the militia and to place it in irresponsible hands, where, if reports 
speak truly, it has been employed in the most Avanton outrages and disgraceful 
persecution of citizens of the opposite political party. He held, therefore, that 
the decision of the inhabitants was fortunate and wise. It was well, that 
before they assume the responsibilities of a State, they should gather population, 
develope the natural resources of the country, and above all acquire the homo- 
geneous character which would give security to person and property, and fit 
them to be justly denominated a community. 

A stranger, and but a passing observer of events in Maine, he had neverthe- 
less seen indications of a reaction in popular opinion, which promised hope- 
fully for the future of Democracy, hopej'nlhj, it might be permitted for one to 
say who believed that the success of the Democracy was the only hope for the 
maintenance of the constitution and the perpetuation of the Union which 
sprung from and cannot outlive it. If the language of his friend who preceded 



23 

him should prove prophetic, the waving of tlie banner he described would be 
the dawning of a day which would bring gladness and confidence to many a 
heart now clouded with distrust, and loud would be the cheers which, on dis- 
tant plain and mountain, would welcome Maine again to her position on the 
top of the Democratic pyramid. He saw a brighter sky above him; lie i'elt a 
firmer ibundation beneath his feet, and hoped ere long through a triumph 
achieved by the declaration of principles, suited to every latitude and longitude 
of the United Slates, to receive the assurance that we have passed the breakers 
— that our ship may henceforth float freely on — that our Hag, no longer threat- 
ened with mutilation or destruction, shall throw its broad stripes to the breeze 
and gather stars until its constellation shines a galaxy, and records a family of 
States embracing the new v/orld and its adjacent islands. 



SPEECH AT STATE FAIR AT AUGUSTA, Me. 

[From the Eastern Argus, SepL 29, 1858.] 

On Thursday evening a large ared brilliaHt audience assembled in the Representa- 
stives' Hall, in the Capitol, to listen to the distinguifshed statesman from Mississippi, 
who, upon brief notice and without a moment's leisure for preparation, had kindly 
consented to address th-e Agricultural .Society. We have already spoken of the grat- 
ifying character of what h-e termed his desultory remarks and of the cordially enthu- 
siastic manner in whieli both th« orator and his address were received. As the 
occasion, as well as the character of the remarks, will make them interesting to the 
whole people of our State, we are gratified in being able to lay before our readers a 
more extended and accurate report of them thaw has before api>eared. 

At about half-past eight o''clock, the Society came into the Hall, already crowded 
in every part, and its President, Hon. Samuel F. Perley, in brief and complimentary 
terms, introduced Col. Davis, who advanced to the speaker's stand, and was received 
with loud and prolonged applause. He said: 

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and countrymen : To the many acts of kind- 
ness received from the people of Maine, I have to add the welcome reception 
this evening. The invitation of the Agricultural Society, with the attendant 
•circumstances, serve further to impress me with the hospitality of my fellow 
citizens of this State. Coming here, an invalid, seeking the benefits which 
your clime would aflTord, and preceded by a reputation which was expected to 
prejudice you unfavorably towards me, I have everywhere met courtesy and 
considerate attention, from the hour I landed on your coast to the present time. 
Lt was natural to ask, whence come these manifestations? Is it because the 
opinion wliich had been formed has been found to be unjust, and the reaction 
has been in proportion to the previous impulse? Or is it the exhibition of 
your regard for loyalty to one's friends, and devotion by a citizen to the com- 
munity to which he belongs? Either the one or the other is honorable to you ; 
but there is a broader and more beneficent motive — the prompting of that senti- 
ment which would cause you to recognize in every American citizen a brother. 
That feeling which Daniel Webster indicated when he met me in company 
with your distinguished townsman, ex-Senator Bradbury, and taking us with the 
right hand and with the left, said in the peculiarly impre>sive manner which 
belonged "to him, "My brethren of the North and of the South, how are ye?" 

It IS usual to offer to an Agricultural Society nothing less than a prepared 



24 

address, and had I come with an intention to speak to yon, I should not hare 
failed to make that preparation which is evidence of due regard for the audience. 
The invitation under which I now speak, having been given and accepied this 
evening, I have no power to do more than to offer you desuhorv reniaiks on 
such subjects as my visit to the Fair have suggested, and which may occur to 
me as I progress. 

With great pleasure I iiave witnessed evidences of much attention and deep 
interest in agriculture. It is the basis of all wealth. It is the producer — brings 
all new contributions to the general store. The mechanic arts are essential to 
its success, and they serve by changing the form, to multiply thev?ilue of agri- 
cultural products. And commerce too, by exchanging the products of individuals 
and of countries, enhances the value of labor, and increases the comfort of 
man. They are all essential to each other. I have no disposition to magnify 
or depreciate either, but my proposition is, that the soil is the source from which 
human wealth springs. In addition to these pursuits, society requires what are 
termed liberal professions. They are not producers, though they may contribute, 
by diffusing knowledge, to increase production. They may be necessary to 
give security to property and to take care of some physical wants. For instance 
you have lawyers and doctors; and the less need you have of them the better; 
for though necessary, like government, it is evil which makes them so. As to 
another class — those who have the cure of souls — their mission is so sacre<I, 
their function so high as to place them beyond comment; and of them I have 
notliing to say, except that I propose to say nothing. 

Among the products of agriculture I of course intended to include the farmer's 
stock, and I must here bear my tribute of admiration to the fine display which 
has been niadeof horned cattle; particularly of work oxen, remarkable for their 
size, their adaptation to the purposes ibr which they are kept and the docility 
and yet the unflagging spu'it which they manifested in the trials of strength and 
of deep ploughing. I have not before seen such fine specimens of the Devon 
cattle, — of course I speak of them as they present themselves to the eye — not 
pretending to judge of their relative value to other stock exhibited. Improve- 
ment in the breed of domestic animals goes hand in hand with agricultural 
mechanisni, to give the ability to make two blades of grass to grow where but 
one grew before, and thus to render you indeed benefactors. Skill in the use, 
and ingenuity in devising and constructing implements, serve to render labor 
productive, and relieve it of its most dreary drudgery. It is this mechanical 
ingenuity which has compensated for the high price of labor among us, and 
aided in the development of resources which makes our country the greatest 
of the earth. Blest by soil, climate and government, if we are, as claimed, 
pre-eminent among nations, it is because we have added to other advantages a 
more general cultivation of the mind. The superiority is attributable not so 
much to physical energy, activity and perseverance, as to the improvement of 
that portion of the man which lies above the eyes. 

Though you have done much for the improvement of agricultural hn piemen ts, 
your work is far from being completed. It is not a little surprising that we 
should, to this day, have no reliable rule by which to make a plough, and though 
the model has been iraprijved, certainly it is yet not unlike, and so far as exact 
science is concerned, is on a par with that implement as used by the Eotnans, 
and as it appeared in ancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular 
relation of the parts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied, 
offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useiul to the cultivator. 
In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was aflbrded of the fitness of the 
implements employed to turn deep and wide lYirrows ; but should Ave be content 
with such result as is obtained by trying diflerent models, and then copying one 
which is found to be good? 

Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timber that it 
was naturally to be expected, as it has fiillen out, that the pursuits of n.nvigation 
would most occupy the attention of her people. But let not her sons look to 
the period when her forests have disappeared as that beyond whieh her pros- 



25 

perity may not continue. There are large tracts of land whinh Avhen labor is 
no longer directed to iinnber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the 
valley of the Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial 
districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep vegetable mould 
has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be less permanent than those. 
In them the elements which support the farmer's cro[) may be exhausted by 
cultivation or carried down into substrata of gravel or sand. In the remote 
West to which so many are pressing, the emigrant will encounter an arid climate 
in which irrigation is necessary to ensure a return for (lie labor of husbandry, 
and this involves an original expenditure which it will usually requne large 
capital to bear. In this climate the sun. like a mighty pump, is daily raising the 
water which the currents of cold air from the mountains, or iVom the sea, pre- 
cipitate in the form of genial showers during the period oi' your growing crops ; 
and the granite of the mountains slowly, but steadily disintegrating, gives up 
its fertilizing property to be scattered by unseen hands over plain and over valley. 
With care and with skill in its use I can see no end to the productiveness of that 
portion of your land which is fit for cultivation. 

Your crops, and your mode of tillage are different from that to which I am 
accustomed, and the result is that eaclfsupplies a different segment in the circle 
of man's wants. I am glad that it is so, that it must necessarily be so. Glad, 
because it is an everlasting bond between us ; one which, whilst it binds, renders 
botn doubly prosperous. " Blessed is our lot in this, that our fathers linked us 
together, and established free trade between us. In the diversity of cHmate, 
and of crops, there is an assurance that entire failure cannot occur. If disaster 
and hiight should fall upon one section, it need not go to a foreign land in search 
of bread. Famine, gaunt iamine, with its skeleton step, can never pass our 
borders whilst the free trade of the Union continues. 

But difference in pursuits, in population, and domestic institutions, have been 
made the basis of hostile agitation, and urged as a cause of separation. To my 
mind the reverse would be the rational conclusion. Each exchanging the sur- 
plus of that which it can best produce for the surplus of another which it nnost 
requires, the benefit must be mutual, and the advantage common. Here is a 
commercial, a selfish bond to hold us together. But I will stop here, because 
the current of my thought is carrying me beyond the limit of topics proper to 
the occasion, and 1 must offer as an apology the fact, that though myself a 
cultivator of the soil, my mind has for several years been given so much to 
political subjects, that in speaking without having previously arranged what to 
say. the thought inadvertently runs from the matter I wished to present, into 
collateral questions of governmental concern. Before turning back, however, 
into the original channel, permit me to say that the diversity of which 1 have 
been speaking, formed no small inducement to the union of the States, and that 
it has been tlfrougb that union that we have attained to our present position, and 
stand to-day, all things considered, the happiest, and among the greatest in the 
familv of nations. 

In looking around upon the evidences you have brought of mechanical and 
agricullurarimprovement, I have viewed it not with the curiosity of a stranger,_ 
but with the interest of one who felt that he had a part in it, as an exhibition of 
the prosperity of his country. The whole confederacy is my country, and to 
the innermost fibres of my heart I love it all, and every part. I could not il I 
would, and would not if 1 could, dwarf myself to mere snctionality. My first 
allegiance is to the State of which I am a citizen, and to which by affection and 
association I am personally bound ; but this does not obstruct the perception of 
your greatness, or admiration for much which I have found admirable among 
you. 

Yankee is a word once applied to you as a term of reproach, but you have 
made it honorable and renowned. You have borne the Hag of your country 
from the time when it was ridiculed as a piece of striped bunting, untd it has 
come to be known and respected wherever the ray of civilization has reached ; 
and your canvass-winged birds of commerce have borne civilization into 



26 

regions, where it is not boasting to say, but for your prowess it would not liave 
gone. You have a right to be proud of your achievements as well on the land 
as the sea. Well may you point as you do with satisfaction, to your school- 
houses and your work-shops, and to the fruits they have borne on the forum and 
in the council chamber, and in the manufactures which have increased the 
comforts of our own people, and have encircled the globe to find exchangeable 
products required at home. Those are the greatest and most beneficent 
triumphs — the triumph of mind over matter. These are the monuments of 
greatness, wliich resist both time and circumstance. 

I have spoken of diversity among the people of the United States ; yet there 
is probably greater similitude than is to be found elsewhere over the same extent 
of country, and in the same number of people. In language, especially, our 
people are one; surely much more so than those of any other country. The 
diversity between the people of the difierent States, even those most remote from 
each other, is not as great as that between inhabitants of adjoining countries of 
England, or departments of France or Spain, where provinces have their sepa- 
rate dialects. And chief among the causes for this I would place the primary 
book, in which children of my day learned their letters, and took their first 
lessons in spelling and reading. I refer to the good old spelling book of Noah 
Webster, on wliich I doubt if there has been any improvement, and which had 
the singular advantage of being used over the whole country. To this unity of 
language and general similitude, is to be added a community of sentiment wher- 
ever the American is brought into contrast or opposition to any other people. 

If shadows float over our disc and threaten an eclipse; if there be those who 
would not avert, but desire to precipitate catastrophe to the Union, these are not 
the sentiments otthe American heart ; they are rather the exceptions and should 
not disturb our confidence in that deep seated sentiment of nationality which 
aided our fathers when they entered into the compact of union, and which has 
preserved il to us. You manifest that sentiment to-day in the courtesy which 
you have extended to me. In what other land could a countryman go so far 
from his home and receive among strangers the attention which could only be 
expected from friends ? But it isnot your kindness only, which has caused me 
here to feel at home; I have been brought in contact with men of ray own pur- 
suit, the tillers of the ground and the breeders of stock ; and in my intercourse 
with this class of your citizens, I have been further confirmed in the high 
estimate heretofore placed upon that portion of our population. Happily for 
our country and its institutions, extensive territory and favorable climate, have 
attracted a large part of our population to agricultural pursuits. It is in the 
individuality, the sobriety, and self reliance of the rural population that I look 
for the highest development of those qualities essential to self-government, and 
the brightest illustration of patriotic devotion. They may not be the best 
informed, but learning and wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation 
and entire dependence upon himself, give independence of character and lavor 
that self inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure the 
motives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind 
becomes as it were macadamized ; and though the intercourse is favorable to the 
acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality, independ- 
ence, and purity, without which republican governments rapidly sink into 
decay. It was probably in this view that Mr. Jefierson said, great cities were 
sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes of commerce, required 
for the exchanges on which agricultural and manul'acturing industry depend for 
their prosperity, — they are not evils which we could desire to see abated. My 
desire, however, is, that the rural districts shall not lose their relative importance 
or cease to control in public affairs. Misled and deceived they may be, inter- 
ested in a public wrong they cannot be, and theirs is the sober thought upon 
which reliance must be placed lor the correction of errors and delusions, which 
may temporarily prevail. 

In soci(;ties like this the farmers have the opportunity of comparing opinions 
and results, and thus increasing the amount of their knowledge. The spirit of 



27 

emulation which is excited must lead to improvement, by better directing 
energy in their pursuit. The publication of the results and the comparisons 
thus instituted with what is done in other States, encourages State pride and 
developes community feeling. Whatever tends to the cultivation of the idea of 
State sovereignty and community independence, strengthens the foundation on 
which rests our federal government — the fruition of that principle which led 
our fathers into the war of the revolution, where they purchased with their 
blood the rich inheritance transmitted to us. 

Man once received the title of Domitor Equi, he being proud of the achieve- 
ment of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn, gentler woman sat 
like Penelope handling the disiafif. Subsequently there arose a race of Ama- 
zons, wiio, aspiring to the feats of man, lost the gentleness of woman ; but in 
our happy land and day, rising above the one without running to the excess of 
the other, lovely woman, with all the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, 
musters hes energy when occasion requires, and displays her prowess in com- 
manding the horse. ' Among the interesting features oi' the exhibition I shall 
rememl)er the equestrianism of the ladies. Though it was beautiful in every 
sense of the word, it was not regarded as mere sport, but the rather looked 
upon as part of that mental and physical training which makes a woman more 
than the mere ornament of the drawing-room — fits her usefully to act her 
appropriate part in the trying scenes to which the most favored may be sub- 
jected — to become the mother of heroes, and live in the admiration of posterity. 

Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly made to 
an extension of the area of the United States. A Aviser policy, however, pre- 
vailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasing the variety of our pro- 
ductions, have magnified the advantages of free trade between the States, and 
made us almost independent of other countries for the supply of every object 
whether of necfisity or of luxury. 1 would he glad to extend our boundary 
and make the circle of our products complete, so that, whilst we would encour- 
age commerce with Christendom we should be, commercially as Ave are politi- 
cally, absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary to 
terminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman of former 
days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of tire, that it might be a barrier to 
shut out European contamination. Whatever fear was once justifiable, no 
apprehension now need to exist, that our people Avill imitate or seek to adopt 
the political theories of Europe. We have recently rejoiced in the success of 
the attempt to establish telegraphic communication with England ; because in 
closer commercial ties Ave saw no danger of political influence. I was happy 
this evening io receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at last 
complete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger than their 
hopes— thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from the beginning antici- 
pated success, and have heretofore said that if the present attempt failed I Avas 
sure that Yankee enterprise and skill could make a cable and lay it across the 
Atlantic. And we look forward to the result with hope, not doubting, that the 
closest commercial connexion with other countries can only bring to us benefits. 
We are not, and have not been, political propagandists, yet believing our Ibrra 
of Government the best, Ave properly desire its extension and invite the Avorld to 
scrutinize our example of representative liberty. 

The stars on our Hag, recording the number of the States united, have already 
been more than doubled; and Thopefully look forAvard to the day Avhen the 
constellation shall become a galaxy covering the stripes, which record the orig- 
inal number of our political family, and shall shed over the nations of the earth 
the light of regeneration to mankind. It has sometimes been said to be our 
manifest destinv that we should possess the whole of this continent. Whether 
it shall ever all' be part of the United States is doubtful, and may never be 
desirable; but that in some form or other, it should come under the protectorate 
or control of the United States, is a result Avhich seems to me, in the remote 
future, certain. It Avahs as the consequence upon intellectual vigor, upon 
physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can only be defeated by a 
suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to the occasion to treat. 



28 

I would not be understood to advocate what is called fillibustering. Our 
country has never obtained territory except fairly, honorably and peaceably. 
We have conquered territory, but have asserted no title as the right of conquest, 
returning to Mexico all except the part she agreed to sell and for which we 
paid a liberal price. England having fillibustered around the world, has 
reproached us for aggrandizement, and we point to history and invite a com- 
parison. There is no stain upon our escutcheon, no smoke upon our garments, 
and thus may they remain pure forever! The acquisitions of which 1 spoke, 
the protectorate which was contemplated, were such as the necessities of the 
future should demand, and the good of others as much as our own require, 
and this step by step, faster or slower, will, I believe, finally embrace the con- 
tinent of America and its adjacent islands. 

I am not among those who desire to incorporate into our Union, countries 
densely populated with a different race. Deserts, 'tis the province of our 
people to subdue. A mere handful of inhabitants, such as existed in Louisiana, 
are soon enveloped in the tide of immigration ; of this character of acquisition 
1 have no fear; but the mingling of races is a different thing. I have looked 
with interest and pleasure upon the crosses of your cattle and horses, and saw 
in it the evidence of improvement. Let your Messengers, your Morgans, your 
Drews, and your Eatons be mingled with each other and with new importa- 
tions; so with your Durhams, Devons, Ayreshires and your Jerseys. The 
limit to these experiments will be where experience shows deterioration. There 
is one cross which it is to be hoped you will avoid : 'tis that which your Puri- 
tan fathers would not adopt or even entertain. They kept pure the Caucasian 
blood which flowed in their veins, and therein is the cause of your present high 
civilization, your progress, your dignity and your strength. We are one, let us 
remain unmixed. In our neighbors of Southern and Central America we have 
a sufficient warning ; and may it never be our ill-fortune to learn by experience 
the lessons taught by their example. 

It is due to the hospitality and kind consideration with which I have been 
treated since I first came among you that I shou Id not leave you under any doubt 
in relation to the accusations which have been busily circulated against me. And 
this, it is to be hoped, will not be mistaken for egotism, since the greatest 
interest I have in doing so is to justify you to yourselves. I know of no selfish 
purpose, unless a proper desire for esieem be such, which would lead me to 
attemj)t to undeceive you, so far as any of you may have been imposed upon. 
I certainly do not expect to change my residence from the State in which I was 
reared ; and I long since avowed the intention never again to receive official 
trust from any other authority than that of the people of the State of which I 
am a citizen. It has been represented to you that you were showering atten- 
tions upon one who was hostile to your interests, and regardless of your rights. 
I am grateful to you lor the constant evidence you have given that you discred- 
ited the statement, and I am therefore the more anxious that you should not 
remani in doubt. The public record coutainsall I have said and done, and in it 
nothing can he found to sustain the statement. Of this I am quite sure, because 
it has always been wiih me a principle to exercise public functions in the spirit 
of the Constituiion and the purposes of the Union. If I know myself, I have 
never given a vote Irom a leeling of hostility to any portion of our common 
country ; but have always kept in view the common obligation for the common 
welfare, and desired by maintaining the constitution in each and every particu- 
lar, to perpetuate the blessings it was designed to secure, and to transmit the 
inheritance received from our fathers unmulilated and uncontaminated to 
remotest posterity. In some positions it has devolved upon me to study inter- 
ests in Maine, with a view to secure for them proper provision, and I feel that 
I am justified in saying they were considered as became one who had sworn to 
protect the Constitution, and who had a function to perform m relation to a 
sovereign State of the Union. Hereto'fore I have been prompted merely by 
what I believed to be duty to you from me as an officer under tlie Constituiion. 
Hereafter, though the principles on which I will act cannot vary, I should be 



29 

less than a man if I did not feel deeper interest in whatever concerns you. I 
shall always bear with me most pleasurable recollections of my sojourn among 
you, and hope it may be my good fortune some day to meet some of you in 
Mississi|)pi. and tiius have it in my power to reciprocate, imperfectly it may be, 
the kindness which you bestowed upon me. I thank you for your polite atten- 
tion, and cordially wish for you, one and all, present and future prosperity. 



S P K K C H A T T H E 

GRAND RATIFICATION MEETING, FANEUIL HALL, 

Monday evening, Oct. lllh, 1858. 

Countrymen, Brethren, Democrats — Most happy am I to meet you, and 
to have received here renewed assurance — of that which I have so long believed — 
that the pulsation of the democratic heart is the same in every parallel of lati- 
tude, on every meridian of longitude throughout the United States. But it 
required not this to confirm me in a belief so long and so happily enjoyed. — 
Your own great statesman who has introduced me to this assembly has been too 
long associated with me, too nearly connected, we have labored too many hours, 
sometimes even until one day ran into another, in tiie cause of our country, for 
me to fad to understand that a Massachusetts democrat has a heart comprehending 
the whole of our wide Union, and tliat its pulsations always beat for the liberiy 
and happiness of its country. Neither could I be unaware such was the senti- 
ment of the democracy of New England. For it was my fortune lately to serve 
under a President drawn from the neighboring State of New Hampshire, 
[applause,] and I know that he spoke the language of his lieart, for [ learned 
it in four years of intimate connection with him, when he said he knew " no 
north, no south, no east, no west, but sacred n)aintenance of the common bond 
and true devotion to the common brotherhood." Never, sir, in the past history 
of our country, never, I add, in its i'uture destiny, however bright it may be, 
did or will a man of higher and purer patriotism, a man more devoted to the 
common weal of his country, hold tlie helm of our great ship of Stale, tlian 
that same New Englander, Franklin Pierce. [Applause.] 

I have heard the resolutions read and approved by this meeting ; heard the 
address of your candidate for Governor; and these added to the address of my 
old and intimate friend, Gen. Gushing, bear to me ii'esh testimony, which I shall 
be happy to carry away with me, that the deniocracy, in the language of your 
own glorious Webster, " still lives," lives not as his great spirit did, when it 
hung 'twixt life and death, like a star upon the horizon's verge, but lives like 
the germ that is shooting upward, like the sapling that is growing to a nu'ghty 
tree, the branches of which will spread over the commonwealth, and may 
redeem and restore Massachusetts to her once glorious place in the Union. 

As I look around me and see this venerable hall thus thronged, it reminds me 
of another meeting, when it was found too small to contain the assembly — that 
great meeting which assembled here, when the people were called upon to 
decide what should be done in relation to the tea-lax. Faneuil Hall, on that 
occasion, was found too small, and the people went to the Old South (.'liurcli. 
which still stands — a monument of your early history. And 1 hope the day 
will soon coine-wlien many Democratic meetings in Boston will be too large lor 
Faneuil [Jail! [Applause.] 1 am welcomed to ihis hall, so veneraijie lor its 
associations with our early history ; to this hall of which you are so justly 
proud, and the memories of which are part of the inheritance of every American 



30 

citizen ; and feel, as I remember how m^ny voices of" patriotic fervor have here 
been heard ; that in it orifrinated the first movements from which the Revolution 
sprung; that here began that system of town meetings and free discussion 
which is the glory and safety of our country ; that I had enough to warn me, 
that though my theme was more humble than theirs, (as befitted my poorer 
ability,) tliat it was a hazardous thing for me to attempt lo speak in this sacred 
lemple. But when I heard your statesman (Gen. Gushing) say, tiiat a word 
once here spoken never dies, that it becomes a part of the circumambient air, 1 
felt a reluctance to speak which increases upon me as I recall his expression. 
But if those voices which breathed the first instincts into the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts, and into those colonies which formed the United States, to proclaim 
community independence, and asserts it against the powerful mother country, 
— if those voices live here still, how must they feel who come here to preacli 
treason to the Constitution, and assail the Union it ordained and established ? 
[Applause.] It would seem that their criminal hearts should fear that those 
voices, so long slumbering, would break their silence, that the forms which look 
down from these walls behind and around me, would walk forth, and that their 
sabres would once more be drawn from their scabbards, to drive Irom this sacred 
lemple fanatical men, who desecrate it more than did the changers of money 
and those who sold doves, the temple of the living God. [Loud cheers.] 

And here, too, you have, to remind you, and to remind ail who enter this 
hall, the portraits ot those men who are dear to every lover of liberty, and part 
and parcel of the memory of every American citizen. Highest among them all 
I see you have placed Samuel Adams and John Hancock. [Applause.] You 
have placed tliem the highest and properly ; for they were the two. the only 
two, excepted from the proclamation of mercy, when Governor Gage issued his 
anathema against them and their fellow patriots. These men, thus excepted 
from the saving grace of the crown, now occupy the highest place in Faneuil 
Hall, and thus are consecrated highest in the reverence of the people of Boston. 
[Applause.] This is one of the instances in Avhich we find tradition more 
reliable than history ; for tradition has borne the name of Samuel Adams to the 
remotest corner of our territory, placed it among the household words taught to 
the rising generation, and there m the new States intertwined with our love of 
representative liberty, it is a name as sacred among us as it is among you of 
New England. [Applause.] 

We remember bow early he saw the necessity of commvnity independence. 
How, through the dim mists of the future, and in advance of his day, he looked 
forward to the proclamation of that independence by Massachusetts; how he 
steadily strove, through good report and evil report, with the same unwavering 
purpose, whether in the midst of his fellow citizens, cheered by their voices, or 
or whether isolated, a refugee, hunted as a criminal, and communing with his 
own heart, now under all circumstances his eye was still fixed upon ii is first, 
last hope, the community independence of Massachusetts! And when we 
see him, at a later period, the leader in that correspondence Avhich waked the 
feelings of the other colonies and brought into fraternal association the people of 
Massachusetts with the people of other colonies — when we see his letters acknow- 
ledging the receipt of the rice of South Carolina, the flour, the pork, the money 
of Virginia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and otiiers, contributions of 
affection to relieve Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon her when her port 
was closed by the despotism of the British crown — we there see the beginning 
of that sentiment whicii insured the co-operation of the colonies throughout the 
desperate struggle of the Revolution, and which, if the present generation be 
true to the compact of their sires, to tlie memory and to the principles of the 
noble men from whom tl ey descended, will perpetuate for them that spirit of 
fraternity in whicli the Union began. [Applause.] 

But it is not here alone, nor in reminiscences connected with the objects 
which present themselves within this hall, that the people of Boston havemuch 
to excite liieir patriotism and carrv ihem back to tlie great principles of the 
revolutionary struggle. Where in iliis vicinity will you go and not meet some 



81 

monument to inspire such sentiments? On one side are Lexington and Con- 
cord, where sixty brave countrymen came with their fowhog pieces to oppose 
six hundred veterans, — Avhere peaceful citizens animated by the love of inde- 
pendence and covered by the triple shield of a righteous cause, finally forced 
those veterans back, and pursued them on the road, fighting from every barn, 
and bush, and stock, and stone, till they drove them to the shelters from Avliich 
they had gone forth! [Applause.] And there on another side of your city 
stand those monuments of your early patriotism. Breed's and Bunkei's Hill, 
whose soil drank the sacred blood of men who lived for their country and died 
for mankind! Can it be that any of you tread that soil and i'orget the great 
purposes for which those men bravely fought, or nobly died 7" [Applause.] 
While m yet another direction rise the Heights of Dorchester, once the encamp- 
ment of the great Virginian, the man who came here in the cause of American 
independence, who did not ask " Is this a town of Virginia?" but, " Is this a 
towm of my brethren?" who pitched his camp and commenced his operations 
with the steady courage and cautious wisdom characteristic of Washington, 
hopefully, resolutely waiting and watching for the day when he could drive the 
British troops out of your city. [Cheers.] 

Here, too, you find where once the Old Liberty Tree, connected with so many 
of your memories, grew. You ask your legend, and learn that it was cut down 
for firewood by the British soldiers, as some of your meeting houses were pulled 
down. They burned the old tree, and it warmetl the soldiers enough to enable 
them to evacuate the city. [Laughter.] Had they been more slowly warmed into 
motion, had it burned a little longer, u might have lighted Washington and his 
followers to their enemies. 

But they were gone, and never again may a hostile foe tread your shore. 
Woe to the enemy who shall set his footprint upon your soil; he comes to a 
prison or he comes to a grave! [Applause.] American fortifications are not 
intended to protect our country from invasion. They are constructed elsewhere 
as in your harbor to guard points where marine attacks can be made ; and for 
the rest, the breasts of Americans are our parapets. [Applause.] 

But, my friends, it is not merely in these military associations, so honorably 
connected with the pride of Massachusetts, that one who visits Boston finds 
much for gratification. If I were selecting a place where the advocate of strict 
construction of the Constitution, the extreme asserter of democratic state rights 
doctrine should go for his text, I would send him into the collections of your 
historical association. Instead of finding Boston a place where the records 
would teach only federalism, he would find here, in bounteous store, that sacred 
doctrine of state rights, Avhich has been called the extreme and ultra opinion of 
the iSouth. He would find among your early records that at the time when 
Massachusetts was under a colonial government, administered by a man 
appointed by the British crown, guarded by British soldiers ; the use of this old 
Faneuil Hall was refused by the town authorities to a British Governor, to hold 
a British festival, because he was going to bring with him the agents for col- 
lecting, and naval officers sent here to enforce, an unconstitutional tax upon 
your commonwealth. Such was the proud spirit of independence manifested 
even in your colonial history. Such the great stone your fathers hewed 
with sturdy hand, and left the fit foundation for a monument to state rights! 
[Applause.] And so throughout the early period of our country you find 
Massachusetts leading, most prominent of all the States, in the assertion of that 
doctrine which has been recently so much decried. 

Having achieved your independence, having passed through the confedera- 
tion, you assented to the formation of our present constitutional Union. You 
did not surrender your state sovereignty. Your fathers had sacrificed too much 
to claim as the reward of their trials that they should merely have a change of 
masters.- And a change of masters it would have been had Massachusetts 
surrendered her State sovereignty to the central government, and consented that 
that central government should have the power to coerce a State. But if this 
power does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, I say, 



32 

who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your candidate this 
evening, when he has plead to you the cause of Slate independence, and the 
ri£!^ht of every comn)unity to be the judge of its own domestic afl'airs? [Ap- 
plause.] This is all we have ever asked — we of the South, I mean, — tor I 
sland before you one of those who have been called the ultra men of the South, 
and I speak, therefore, for that class; and tell you that your candidate for 
Governor has asserted to-night everything which we have claimed as a right, 
and demanded as a duty resulting iiom the guarantees of the Constitution, 
made for our mutual protection. [Applause.] Nor is here alone in that such 
doctrine is asserted, the like it has been my happiness to hear in your daughter, 
the neighboring State ol' Maine. I have found that the democrats there asserted 
the same broad, constitutional principle for which we have been contending, by 
which we are willing to live, for which we are willing to die! [Loud cheers 
and cries of " good !"] 

In this state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated? What is 
there practical or rational in the present excitement? Why, since the old con- 
troversies, with all their lights and shadows, have passed away, is the political 
firmament covered by one dark pall, the funeral shade of which increases with 
every passing year? 

Why is it, I say. that you are thus agitated in relation to the domestic affairs 
of other communities? Why is it that the peace of the country is disturbed in 
order that one people may assume to judge of what another people should do? 
Is there any political power to authorize such interference? If so, where is 
it? You did not surrender your sovereignty. You gave to the federal govern- 
ment certain functions. It was your agent, created i'or specified purposes. It 
can do nothing save that which you have given it power to perform. Where 
is the grant of the Constitution which confers on the federal government a right 
to determine what shall he property? Surely none such exists; that question 
it belongs to every community to settle for itself: you judge in your case; 
every other State must judge in its case. The federal gov^ernment has no 
power to create or establish ; more palpably still, it has no power to destroy 
property. Do you pay taxes to an agent that he may destroy your property? 
Do you support him for that purpose? It is an absurdity on the lace of it. To 
ask the question is to answer it. The government is instituted to protect, not 
to destroy property. In abundance of caution, your fathers provided that the 
federal government should not take private property, even for its own use, 
unless by making due compensation therefor. One of its great purposes was 
to mcrease tiie security of property, and by a more perfect union of forces, to 
render more efliective protection to the States. When that power for protection 
becomes a source of danger, the purpose for which the government was formed 
Avill have been defeated, and the government can no longer answer the ends for 
which it was established. 

Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African slavery, 
are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes 
said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a 
sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins. [Laughter.] Who gave 
them a right to decide that it is a sin ? By what standard do they measure it? 
Not the Constitution; the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, 
and imposes obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the Bible; 
that justifies it. Not the good of society ; for if they go where it exists, they 
find that society recognizes it as good. What, then, is their standard? The 
good of mankind? Is that seen in the diminished resources of the country? 
Is that seen in the diminished comfort of the world? Or is not the reverse 
exhibited? Is it in the cause of Christianity ? It cannot be, for servitude is 
the only agency through which Christianity has reached that degraded race, the 
only means by wiiich they have been civilized and elevated. Or is tlieir charity 
nianil'esied in denunciation of their brethren who are restrained from answering 
by the contempt which they feel for a mere brawler, whose weapons are empty 
words? [Applause.] 



33 

What, my friends, must be the consequences of this agitation? Good or 
evil? They have been evil, and evil they must be only, to the end. Not one 
particle of good has been done to any man, of any color^by this agitation. It 
has been insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for the destruction of that 
Union on which our hopes of future greatness depend. 

On the one side, then you see agitation, tending slowly and steadily to that 
separation of the states, which, if you have any hope connected with the liberty 
of mankind, if you have any national pride in making your country the greatest 
of the earth, if you have any sacred regard for the obligation which the acts of 
your lathers entailed upon you, — by each and all of these motives you are 
prompted to united and earnest effort to promote the success of that great ex- 
periment which your fathers left it to you to conclude. [Applause.] On the 
other hand, if each community, in accordance with the principles of our gov- 
ernment, whilst controlling its own domestic institutions, faithfully struggles as 
a part of the united whole, for the comnaon benefit of all, the future points us 
to Jiaternity, to unity, to co-operation, to the increase of our own happiness, 
to the extension of our useful example over mankind, and the covering of that 
flag, whose stars have already more than doubled their original number, [ap- 
plause,] with a galaxy to ligiit the ample folds which then shall wave either the 
recognized flag of every state, or the recognized protector of every state upon 
the continent of America. [Applause.] 

In connection with the idea, which 1 have presented of the early sentiment 
of community independence, I will add the very striking fact that one of the 
colonies, about the time that they had resolved to unite for the purpose of 
achieving their independence, addressed the colonial congress to know in what 
condition they would be in the interval between their separation from the gov- 
ernment of Great Britain and the establishment of the government for the 
colonies. The answer of the colonial congress was exactly that which might 
have been expected — exactly that which state rights democracy Avould answer 
to-day, to such an inquiry — that they must take care of their domestic polity, 
that the congress "had nothing to do with it." [Applause.] If such senti- 
ment continued — if it governed in every state — if representatives were chosen 
upon it — then your halls of legislation would not be disturbed about the ques- 
tion of the domestic concerns of the different states. The peace of the country 
would not be hazarded by the arraignment of the family relations of people 
over whom the government has no control. In harmony working together, in 
co-intelligence for the conservation of the interests of the country, in protection 
to the states and the development of the great ends for which the government 
was established, what effects might not be produced? As our government 
increased in expansion, it would increase in its beneficent influence upon the 
people; we should increase in fraternity; and it would be no longer a wonder 
to see a man coming from a southern state to address a Democratic audience in 
Boston. [Applause, cries of " good, good."] 

But I have referred to the fact that, at an early period, Massachusetts stood 
pre-eminently forward among those who asserted community independence. 
And this reminds me of an incident, in illustration, which occurred when Presi- 
dent Washington visited Boston, and John Hancock was Governor. The latter 
is reported to have declined to call upon the President, because he contended 
that every man who came within the limits of Massachusetts must yield rank 
and precedence to the Governor of the State; and only surrendered the point on 
account of his personal regard and respect for the character of George Wash- 
ington. I honor him for it, — value it as one of the early testimonies in favor of 
State Rights, and wish all our governors had the same high estimate of the 
dignity of the oSice of Governor of a State as had that great and glorious man. 
[Applause.] 

Thus it appears that the founders of this government were the true Demo- 
cratic States Rights men. That Democracy was States rights, and States rights 
was Democracy, and it is to-day. Your resolutions breathe it. The Decfara- 
tion of Independence embodies the sentiment which had lived in the hearts 

3 



34 

yf the f)eoplp for many years berore its formal assertion. Our fathers asseftefl 
that great principle — the right of the people to choose the government for thenrr- 
selves — that government rested upon the consent of the governed. In every 
fortn of expression it uttered the same idea, cnmmwtUy independence, and the 
dependence of the government upon the community over which it existed. It 
was an American principle, the great spirit which animated our country then, 
and it were well if more inspired us now. But 1 have said that this State 
sovereignty — this community mdependence — has never been surrendered, and 
that there is no power in the federal government to coerce a Stale. Does any 
one ask, then, how it is tiiat a Slate is to be held to its obligations ? My answer 
is : by its honor, and the obligation is the more sacred to observe every feature 
of the compact, because there is no power to Ibrce obedience. The great 
error of the confederation was that it attempted to act upon the States. It was 
found impracticable, and our present form of government was adopted, which 
acts upon individuals and does not attempt to act upon States. 

The question was considered in the convention which framed the constitution, 
and after discussion the proposition to give power to the general government to 
enforce upon a resistant State obedience to the law was rejected. It was upon 
this ground of exemption from compulsion that the compact of the States be- 
came a sacred obligation; and it was upon this honorable fulfilment principally 
that our fathers depended lor the security of the rights which the Constitution 
was designed to secure. [Applause.] 

The fugitive slave compact in the Constitution of the United Stales implied 
that the States should fulfil it voluntarily. They expected the States to legis- 
late so as to secure tlie rendition ol fugitives. 

And in 1788 it was a matter of complaint that the colony of Florida did not 
restore fugitive negroes from the United Stales who escaped into that colony, 
and a committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York, Sedgwick, of Massa- 
chusetts, and Madison, of Virginia, reported resolutions in the Congress 
instructing the committee for foreign afl'airs to address the charge d\ijfaircs at 
Madrid to apply to his majesty of Spain to issue orders to his governor to com- 
pel them to secure the rendition of fugitive negroes to any one who should go 
there entitled to receive them. This was the sentiment of the committee, and 
they added, by way of example, as the States would return any slaves from 
Florida who might escape into their limits. 

When the Constitutional requirement was imposed, who could have doubted 
that every State i'ailhful to its obligations would comply without raising ques- 
tions as to whether the institution should or should not exist in another commu- 
nity over which they had no control. Congress was at last forced by the fail- 
ures of the States, to legislate on the subject, and this has been one of the 
causes by which you have been disturbed. You have been called upon to make 
war against a law which would never have been enacted, if each State had 
faithfullv discharged the obli^aiion imposed by the compact of the Constitution. 
[Cheers'.] 

There is another question connected with this negro agitation. It is in relation 
to the right to hold slaves in thf Territories. What power hnsConjiress to declare 
what shall be property ? None, in tiie territory or elsewhere. Have the States 
by separate legislation the power to prescribe the condition upon which a citizen 
may enter on and enjoy the common property of the United States ? Clearly 
not. Shall ihose who first go into the territory, deprive any citizen of the United 
States subsequently emigrating thitlier, of those rights which belong to him as 
an equal owner of the soil ? Certainly not. Sovereignty jurisdiction can only 
pass to these inhabitants when the States, the owners of that territory, shall 
recognize the inhabitants as an independent community, and admit it to become 
an equal Stale of the Union. Until then the Constitution and laws of the United 
States must be the rules governing within the limits of a territory. The Con- 
stitution recognizes all property ; gives equal privileges to every citizen ot the 
States; and it would be a violation of its fundamental principles to attempt any 
discrimination. [Applause.] Viewed in any of its phases, political, moral, 



35 

social, general, or local, what is there to sustain this accitation in relation to other 
people's negroes, unless it be a bridge over which to pass into ollice — a ready 
capital in politics available to missionaries staying at home — reformers of things 
which they do not goto learn — preachers without an audience — overseers with- 
out laborers and without wages — war-horses who snufT the battle afar off, and 
cry: "Aha! aha! I am afar ofT from the battle." [Great laughter and 
applause.] 

Thus it is that the peace of the Union is destroyed ; thus it is that brother is 
arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people cotne to consider — not how 
they can promote each other's interests, but how they may successfully war 
upon them. And the political agitator like the vampire ians the victim to which 
he clings but to destroy. 

Among culprits there is none more odious to my mind than a public officer 
who takes an oath to support the Constitution — the compact between the States 
binding each for the common defence and general welfare of the other — yet 
retains to himself a mental reservation that he will war upon the principles he 
has sworn to maintain, and upon the property rights the protection of which 
are part of the compact of the Union. [Applause.] 

It is a crime too low to be named befoie this assembly. It is one which no 
man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that he Avill support the 
Constitution — to take an office which belongs in many of its relations to all the 
Stales; and to use it as a means of injuring a portion of the States of whom he 
is thus the representative; is treason to every thing honorable in man. It is the 
base and cowardly attack of him who gains the confidence of another, in order 
that he may wound him. [Applause.] 

But we have heard it argued — have seen it published — a petition has been 
circulated for signers, announcing that there was an incompatibility between the 
sections; that the Union had been tried long enough, and that it ha<l proved to 
be necessary to separate from those sections of the Union in which the curse of 
slavery existed. Ah! those modern saints, so much wiser than our fathers, 
have discovered an incompatibility requiring separation in those relations which 
existed when the Union was formed. They have found the remnants only of 
a diversity which existed when South Carolina sent her rice to Boston, and 
Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York brought in their funds for her relief. 

They have found the remnants only ; for from that day to this the difference 
between the people has been constantly decreasing, and the necessity for union 
which then arose in no small degree from the diversity of product, and soil and 
climate, has gone on increasing, both by the extension of our own territory and 
the introduction of new tropical products ; so that whilst the difference between 
the people has diminished, the diversity in the products has increased, and that 
motive for union which your fathers found exists in a higher degree than it did 
when they resolved to be united. 

Diversity there is of occupation, of habits, of education, of character. But 
it is not of that extreme kind which proves incompatibility, or even incongruity; 
for your Massachusetts man, when he comes to Mississippi, adopts our opinions 
and our institutions, and frequently becomes the most extreme southern man 
among us. [Great applause.] As our country has extended — as new products 
have been introduced into it, the free trade which blesses our Union, has been 
of increasing value. 

And it is not an unfortunate circumstance that this diversity of pursuit and 
character has survived the condition which produced it. Originally it sprang 
in no small degree from natural causes. Massachusetts became a manufactur- 
ing and a commercial Slate because of the connection between her fine harbor 
and water power, resulting fiom the fact that the streams make their last leap 
into the sea, so that the ship of commerce brought the staple to the manufac- 
turing power. This made you a commercial and manufacturing people. In 
the Southern States great plains interpose between the last leaps of the streams 
and the sea. Those plains most proximate to navigation, were the first cultiva- 
ted, and the sea bore their products to the most approachable water power, there 
to be manufactured. This was the first cause of the difference. Then your 



36 

longer and more severe winters — your soil not as favorable for agriculture, also 
contributed to make you a manufacturing and commercial people. 

After the controlling cause had passed away — after railroads had been built — 
after the steam engine had become a motive power for a large part of machinery, 
the characteristics originally stamped by natural causes continued the diversity 
of pursuit. Is it fortunate or otherwise? I say it is iortunate. Your interest 
is to remain a manufacturing and ours to remain an agricultural people. 

Your prosperity is to receive our staple and to manufacture it, and ours to 
sell it to you and buy the manufactured goods. [Applause.] This is an 
interweaving of interests, which makes us all the riclier and all the happier. 

But this accursed agitation, this offensive, injurious intermeddling with the 
affairs of other people, and this alone it is that will promote a desire in the mind 
of any one to separate these great and growing States. [Applause.] 

The seeds of dissension may be sown by invidious reflections. Men may 
be goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and to traduce com- 
munity character, and iu the resentment which follows it is not possible to tell 
how far the case may be driven. I therefore plead to you now to arrest a fanati- 
cism which has been evil in the beginning, and must be evil to the end. You may 
not have the numerical power requisite ; and those at a distance may not under- 
stand how many of you there are desirous to put a stop to the course of this 
agitation. But let your language and your acts teach them to appreciate a 
faithful self-denying minority. 1 have learned since I have been in New Eng- 
land the vast mass of true State Rights Democrats to be found within its limits 
— though not represented in the halls of Congress. 

And if it comes to the worst ; if, availing themselves of a majority in the two 
Houses of Congress, our opponents should attempt to trample upon the Con- 
stitution; to violate the rights of the States; to infringe upon our equality in 
the Union, I believe that even in Massachusetts, though it has not had a repre- 
sentative in Congress for many a day, the State Rights Democracy, in whose 
breasts beats the spirit of the revolution, can and will whip the Black Republi- 
cans. [Great applause.] I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it were, by 
fire; but that the peaceful progressive revolution of the ballot box will answer 
all the glorious purposes of the Constitutional Union. [Applause.] 

I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded me in 
addressing you used the words national and conslitutional in such relations to 
each other as to show that in his mind the one was a synonym of the other. 
And does he not do so with reason ? We became a nation by the constitution ; 
whatever is national springs from the constitution ; and national and constitu- 
tional are convertible terms. [Applause.] 

Your candidate for the high othce of governor — whom I have been once or 
tAvice on the point of calling your governor, and whom I hope f may be able 
soon to call so, [applause] — in his remarks to you has presented the same idea 
in another form. And well may Massachusetts orators, without even perceiv- 
ing what they are saying, utter sentiments which lie at the foundation of your 
colonial as well as your revolutionary history, which existed in Massachusetts 
before the revolution, and have existed since, whenever the true spirit which 
comes down from the revolutionary sires has been aroused into utterance within 
her limits. [Applause.] 

It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutual dependence of 
interest that we have formed new bonds. Those bonds are both material and men- 
tal. Every improvement in the navigation of a river, every construction of a rail- 
road, has added another link to the chain which encircles us, another facility 
for interchange and new achievements, whether it has been in arts or in science,* 
in war or in manufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled suc- 
cess has constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has ofl'ered to us 
new sentiments of nationality. 

Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, which follow 
in the course of our political day? Is it because the sun is declining to the 
horizon ? Are they the shadows of evening ; or are they, as I hopefully 



37 

believe, but the mists vvliich are exhaled by the sun as it rises, l)Ut which are to 
be dispersed by its meridian splendor? Are they but evanescent clouds that 
flit across butcannot obscure the great purposes for which the Constitution was 
established ? 

I hopefully look forward to the reaction which will establish the fact that our 
sun is ypt in the ascendant — that the cloud which has covered our political pros- 
pect is but a mist of the morning — that we are again to be amicably divided 
in opinion upon measures of expediency, upon questions of relative interest, 
upon discussions as to the rights of the States, and the powers of the federal 
government, — such discussion as is commemorated in this historical picture 
[pointing to the painting.] There your own great Statesman, Webster, 
addresses his argument to our brightest luminary, the incorruptible Calhoun, 
who leans over to catch the accents of eloquence that fall Irom his lips. [Loud 
applause.] 

They differed as Statesmen and philosophers; they railed not, warred not 
against each other; they stood to each other in* the relation of affection and 
regard/ And never did I see Mr. Webster so agitated, never did I hear his voice 
so'' taker, as when he delivered his eulogy on John C. Calhoun. [Applause.] 
But allusion was made to my own connection with your favorite departed 
Statesman. 1 will only say on this occasion, that very early in the commence- 
ment of mv congressional life, Mr. Webster was arraigned for an offence which 
affected him most deeply. He was no accountant ; all knew that there was but 
little of mercantile exactness in his habits. He was arraigned on a pecuniary 
charge — the misapplication of what is known as the secret service fund; and 
I was one of the committee that had to investigate the charge. I endeavored to 
do justice, to examine the evidence with a view to ascertain the truth. As an 
American I hoped he would come out without stain or smoke upon his gar- 
ments. But however the fame of so distinguished an American Statesman 
might claim such hopes, the duty was rigidly to inquire, and rigorously to do 
justice. The result was that he'was acquitted of every charge that was made 
against him, and it was equally ray pride and my pleasure to vindicate him in 
every form which lay within my power. [Applause.] No man \yho knew 
Daniel Webster, would have expected less of him. Had our position been 
reversed, none such could have believed that he would with a view to a judg- 
ment ask whether a charge was made against a Massachusetts man or a Missis- 
sippian. No ! it belonged to a lower, a later, and I trust a shorter lived race of 
statesmen [" hear," " hear,"] to measure all facts by considerations of latitude 
and longitude. [Warm applause.] 

I honor that sentiment which makes us oftentimes too confident, and to 
despise too much the danger of that agitation which disturbs the peace of the 
country. I honor that feeling which believes the Constitutional Union too strong 
to be shaken. But at the same time I say, in sober judgment, it will not do to 
treat too lightly the danger which has beset and wliich still impends over us. 
Who has not heard our Constitutional Union compared to the granite cliffs 
which face the sea and dash back the foam of the waves, unmoved by their 
fury. Recently l' have stood upon New England's shore, and have seen the 
waves of a troubled sea dash upon the granite which frowns over the ocean, 
have seen the spray thrown back from the cliff, and the receding wave fret like 
the impotent rage of baffled malice. But when the tide had ebbed, I saw that 
the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating of the sea, and frag- 
ments riven Irom the rock were lying on the beach. 

Thus the waves of sectional'agitation are dashing themselves against the 
granite patriotism of the land. If long continued, that too must show the scains 
and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility must sooner or later produce polit- 
ical fragments. The danger lies at your door, it is time to arrest it. It is time 
that men should go back to the origin of our institutions. They should drink 
the waters of the fountain, ascend to the source, of our colonial history. ^ 

You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in 1//0. 
There learn how your fathers unfaltering stood for community right. And 



38 

near the same spot mark how proudly the delpgation of the democracy came to 
demand the removal of the troops from Boston, and liow ihe venerable Samuel 
Adams stood asserting the rights of llie people, dauntless as Hampden, clear 
and eloquent as Sidney. 

All over our country these monuments, instructive to the present generation, 
of what our fathers felt and said and did, are to be i'ound. In the library of 
your association for the collection of your early history, I found a letter descrip- 
tive of the reading of the address to his army by Gen. Washiiiffton during one 
of those winters when he sought shelter for the ill clad, unshod, but victorious 
army with which he achieved the independence we enjoy; he had built a log- 
cabin for a meeting house, and there readinjr his address, his sight failed him, he 
put on his glasses and with emotion which manifested the reality of his feelings, 
said, '■ I have grown gray in the service of my country, and now i am growing 
blind." Who can measure the value of such incidents in a people's liisiory ? 
It is a privilege to have access to documents, which cause us to realize the trials, 
the patient endurance, the hardy virtue and moral grandeur of tlie men from 
whom we inherit our political institutions, and to whose teachings it were well 
that the present generations should constantly refer. 

If you choose still furtlier to siretcli your vision to South Carolina, you will 
find a parallel to that devotion to their country's cause which illustrates the early 
history of the Democrats of Boston. The prisoners at Charleston, when con- 
fined upon the hulks where they were exposed to the small pox, and, wasted by 
the progress of the infection, were brought upon the shore and assured that if 
they would enlist in his majesty's service they should be relieved from their 
present and prospective sufTerinn:, but if they refused the rations would be taiien 
from their families, and themselves sent to the hulks and exposed to the infection. 
Emaciated as they were, distressed with the prospect of their families being 
turned into the street to starve, the spirit of independence, the devotion to liberty, 
was so warm within their breasts that they gave one loud iiurrah for General 
Washington, and chose death rather than dishonor. [Loud applause] And 
if from these glorious recollections, from the emotions ihey excite, your eye is 
direcied to your present condition, and you mark the prosperity, the growth and 
honorable career of your country, I envy not the heart of that man whose pulse 
does not beat quicker, who does not feel within him the exultation of pride at 
the past glory and the future prospects of his country. These piospects are to 
be realized if we are only wise and true to the obligations of the compact of 
our lathers. For all which can sow dissension can stop the progress of the 
American people, can endanger the achievement of the high prospects we have 
before us is that miserable spirit, which, disregarding duty and honor, makes 
war upon the Constitution. Madness must rule the hour when American citi- 
zens, trampling as well upon the great principles at the foundation of the 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United Slates, as upon 
the honorable obligations which their fatiiers imposed upon them, shall turn 
with internicine hand to sacrifice themselves as well as their brethren, upon the 
altar of sectional fanaticism. 

With these views, it will not be surprising to those who differ from me, that 
I feel an ardent desire for the success of the State Rights Den)ocracy, that 
convinced of the destructive consequences of the heresies of their opponents, 
and of the evils upon which they would precipitate the country, I do not for- 
bear to advocate, here and elsewhere, the success of that party Avhicii alone is 
national, on which alone I rely for the preservation of the Constitution, to [)er- 
petuate the Union, and to fulfil the purposes which it was ordained to establish 
and secure. [Loud cheers.] 

My friends, my brethren, my countrymen — [applause] — I thank you for the 
patient attention you have given me. It is the tirst time it lias been my fortune 
to address an audience here. It will probably be the last. Residing in a k mote 
section of the country, with private as well as public duties to occupy the 
whole of my time, it would only be under some such necessity for a restoration 
of health as has brought me here this season, that I could ever expect to make 



39 

more than a very hurried visit to any other portion of the Union than tliat of 
which I am a ciiizpn. 

I will say, then, on this occasion, that I am glad, truly glad, that it has been 
my fortune to stay long enough among the New Englanders to obtain a better 
acquaintance than one can who passes in the ordinary way through the country, 
at the speed of the railroad tourist. I have stayed long enough to I'cel that generous 
hospitality which evinces itself to-ni'_'ht, wliicli has showed itself in every town 
and village of New England where I have gone — long enough to learn that 
though not represented in Congress, there is within the limits of New England 
a large mass of as true Democrats as are to be found in any portion of the 
Union. Their purposes, their construction of the Constitution, Ilieir hope* for 
the future, their respect for the past, is the same as that which exists among 
ray beloved brethren in Mississippi. [Applause.] 

It is not a great whde since one who was endeavoring to pursue me with 
unfriendly criticism opened an article with my name and '* gone to Boston !" — 
He seemed to think it a damaging reflection to say of me that I had gone to 
Boston — 1 wish he could have been here to look upon these Democratic i'ace.s 
to-night, and to listen to your resolutions and the words of your Massachusetts 
speakers, he might have iieen taught that a man might go and stay at Boston 
and learn better Democracy than many have acquired m other places. 

I shall gratefully carry with me the recollections of this ami oi' other meet- 
ings witnessed since I have been among you. In the hour of apprehension I 
will hopefully turn back to my observations here — here in this consecrated hall, 
where men so early devoted themselves to liberty and community independence; 
and will endeavor to impress upon others who know you only as you are mis- 
represented in the two Houses of Ojnsress, [npplause,] how true and how 
many are the hearts that beat for constitutional liberty, and with high resolve to 
respect every clause and guaranty which the Constitution contains, are pledged 
<o faithfully uphold the rights of any and every portion of the Stales, ixndof 
Che people. {Tremendous cheering.] 



SPEECH IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, 

Palace Garden Meeting, Oct. 19, 1858. 

Countrymen, Democrats: — When I accepted this evening the invitation to 
meet you here, it was to see and to hear, not to speak. I have hstened with 
pleasure to the huigunge addressed to you by your candidate for the highest office 
in the State It is the language of patriotism j it is an appeal to the common sense 
of the people in favor of that fraternity on which our Union was founded, and 
on which alone it can long continue to exist. I have rejoiced to hear the 
applause with which such sentiments, when he uttered them, have been received 
by those here convened, and trust it is but an indication of that onward progress 
of reaction which I believe has already commenced, and which is to sink to the 
lowest depths of forgetfulness the struggle which has so long agitated the 
country, and prompted an internecine war against your countrymen. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Truly has the distinguished gentleman pointed out to you the extreme absurd- 
ity of attempting to excite you upon the ground of southern aggression upon 
the north. We have nothing to aggress upon. We have not now, as he has 
told you, the pov.^er, though once we had, to interfere with your domestic insti- 
tutions. We never had the will to do so. And if we had the power now, true 
to the instincts and history of our fathers, we would abstain from intermeddling 
in your domestic affairs. [Applause.] I have no purpose on this or any other 
occasion to mingle in the consideration of those questions which are local to 
you. I am not sufficiently learned in conchology to do it if I would, [laufjhter,] 
and I have too great a respect for community independence to do it if 1 could. 
My purpose then is, simply in answer to your call, to offer you a lew reflections, 
such as may occur to me, as I progress, upon those questions which are com- 
mon to us all, and wliich belong to the memories of our fathers, and are linked 
with the hopes of our children. [Applause.] If, then, y/ithout preparation, I 
do it in unvarnished phrase, if I cannot carry you along wath me because of 
the want of that flowing diction which might catch the ear, still I ask you to 
hear me lor my cause, for it is the cause of our country, it is the cause of 
democracy, it is the cause of human liberty. [Applause.] 

Who now stand arrayed against the democratic party? The relations of 
parties and the issues upon which we have been divided have changed. What 
now is the basis oi' opposition to the democratic party ? It is twofold — interfer- 
ence with the negroes of other people, and iuterl'erence with tiie rights now 
secured to foreigners who expatriate themselves and come to our land. [" Hear, 
hear," and applause.] To each com.munity belongs the right to decide for itself 
what institutions it will have. To each people sovereign within their own 
sphere, belongs, and to them only belongs, the right to decide what shall be 
property. You have decided it lor yourselves. Who shall gainsay your 
decision 7 Mississippi has decided it for herself; who has the right to gainsay 
her decision ? The power of each people to rule over their domestic affairs lies 
at the foundation of that Declaration of Independence to which you owe your 
existence among the nations of the earth ; that declaration which led your 
fathers into and through the war of the revolution. It is that icliich constitutes 
to-day the doctrine of Slate-rights, upon which it is my pride and pleasure to stand. 
[Applause.] Congress has no power to determine what shall be property any- 
where. Congress has only such grants as are contained in the Constitution. 
And the Constitution confers upon it no power to rule with despotic hand over 
the inhabitants of the Territories. Within the limits of those Territories, the 
common property of the Union, you and I are equal ; we are joint owners. 
Each of us has the right to go into those Territories, with whatever property is 
recognized by the Constitution of the United States. [Applause.] Congress has 



41 

no power to limit or abridge that right. But the inhabitants of a Territory 
when as a people they come to form a State government, whea they possess the 
power and jurisdiction which belongs to the people, of JYcw York, or ani/ other 
State, have the right to decide that question, and no power upon earth has the 
right to decide it before that time. [Applause.] 

"[At this point the Young Men's Democratic National Club, with banners 
and transparencies, entered the garden, and were received with enthusiastic 
cheers.] 

The dull remarks, my friends, which I was in the course of making to you, 
have been interrupted by a beautiful episode, which I am sure will more than 
exceed the whole value of the poem, if I may thus characterize my dull speech. 
And I am glad that foremost among all the transparencies and banners, comes 
this flag which speaks of the " Young Men's Democratic National Club." — 
[^Three cheers for Davis.] It is on the young men we must rely. I have 
tound that in every severe political struggle, where the contest on the one side 
was for principle, and on the other for spoils, it hag been the gray-haired father 
and the boy with the peach bloom upon his cheek upon whom principles had to 
rely for support. My own generation — and I regret to say it — seems too deeply 
steeped in the trickery of politics to be able to rise above the influence of per- 
sonal and political gain into the pure field of patriotism. And I am therefore 
glad to see the " Young Men's Democratic National Club" leading this proces 
sion. 

But to return to the argument I v/as making. I said that Congress had 
no power to legislate upon what should be property anywhere; that Congress 
had no power to discriminate between the citizens of the differerit States who 
should go into the Territories, the common property of all the States, but that 
those Territories of right remained open to every citizen, and every species of 
property recognized in the Constitution, until the inhabitants should become a 
people, form a fundamental law for themselves, and, as authorized by the Con- 
stitution, assume the powers, duties, and obligations of a State. And now. my 
friends, I would ask you. further, of what value would a congressional decision 
upon that subject be'? If it be a constitutional right, as I contend it is, then it 
is a matter for judicial decision. If Congress should assert that such is not the 
right of each of our citizens, and the courts appointed as an arbiter in such 
cases should decide that it is their right, the enactment would, therefore, be void. 
If, on the other hand, it is not a right, but Congress should assert it to be one, 
and the courts should declare that no such right exists under the Constitution, 
then. Congress has no power to create it; and it is in this sense that Congress 
has not the power to establish or prohibit slavery anywhere. [Applause.] 

What, then, has been the foundation of all this controversy? Your candidate 
has justly pointed out to you that unpatriotic struggle for sectional aggrandize- 
ment whichjias brought about this contest — a contest, as it were, between two 
contending powers for national predominance — a contest upon the one side to 
enlarge the majority it now posseses, and a contest upon the other side to 
recover the power it has lost, and become the majority. This is the attitude of 
hostile nations, and not of States bound together in fraternal unity. This is the 
feeling that one by one is cutting the strands which originally held the States 
together. You have seen your churches divided ; you have seen trade turned 
aside from its accustomed channel ; you have seen jealousy and unchar- 
itableness and bickering springing up and growing stronger day by day, 
until at last, if it continue, the cord of union between the States reduced simply 
to the political strand, may not suffice to hold them together. Once united by 
every tie of fraternal feeling, shoulder to shoulder, step by step, our fathers 
went through the revolution, prompted by a common desire for the common 
good, and animated by devotion to the principle of popular liberty. They 
struggled against the mother country, because that country endeavored to legis- 
late for the "colonies, and the colonies claimed as a right that they must not be 
taxed except by their own representatives, and refused to submit to unconstitu- 
tional legislation. If now, in this struggle for the ascendancy in power, one 



42 

action should gain such predominance as would enable it, by modifyinfj the 
Consiitution and usurping new power, to legislate lor the other, the exercise of 
that, power would throw lis back into the condition of the colonies. And if in the 
Vf'ins ol the sons Hows the blood of their sires, they trould not fail to redeem 
themselves from lijraiiny even sJiould they be driven to resort to revolution. 
[Applause.] 

And what is the other question of diflerence now? It is the agitation, as a 
national question, of the right of foreigners to suffrage within these Slates. 
Now, I ask, what power lias Congress over the question? Yet luenibers to 
Coniiress are elected upon that question. How would Congress legislate upon 
it? Thev say, by inedifyins the naturalization laws. What do those laws 
confer? The right to hold real estate and the right to devise it i)y will; the 
right to sue and be sued in the courts of the United States ; and the rights to 
receive passports and protection from the government of ihe United States. 
Who wishes to withhold those privileges from foreigners? l\ol)ody alleges it. 
But they say thai the ballot-box must be protected from foreign votes. Has 
Congress the right to say that foreigners shall not vote wiihin the limits of your 
Sta>e? Are you willing to leave that to Congress? [Cries of " No, no, no," 
and applause.] In some of tiie Slates, by State legislation, foreigners are per- 
mitted to vote before they can l)ecome citizens under the naturalization laws. 
The naturalization laws are not. therefore, controlling over the question of" 
suffraje. The power of Congress is limited to the establishment of a uniform 
rule of naturalization throughout the States, But what further do they couple 
with these demands which they make for congressional legislation? They 
proclaim their purpose to be to exclude paupers and criminals from abroad. — 
Do paupers and criminals come for the right of suffrage? They come here for 
bread, or to fly from the laws which they have violated. Whether they shall 
be entitled to vole or not, would neither increase nor diminish the number of 
that class by a single individual. But, my friends, who is a pauper, or who is 
a criminal ? Is a man a pauper merely because he comes here without property, 
without money in his purse? Go, look along your lines of internal improve- 
ments, where every mile has mingled with it the bones of some foreigner 
who labored to create it. Go to your battle fields, where your flag has been 
borne triumphanilv, and where fresh laurels have been added to the brow of 
your country, and there you will find the sod dyed as deep by the blood of the 
foreign born as by that of' the native citizen. [Applause.] Is the able-bodied 
man, who comes here to contribute to your national interests by building up 
your public works, or aiding in the erection of your architectural constructions, 
or who bears your flag in the hour of danger, and who bleeds and dies for your 
country, is he the pauper you desire to exclude? And who is the criminal? 
Is it he who, flying from the persecution of despotic governments, seeks our 
land as the Huguenot did, as did Soule, the stern American orator, as many 
others within your limits have done under more recent struggles for liberty in 
Europe ? [Applause.] Then, who are the paupers and criminals? Is tliat to 
be decided by the ruling of other countries, by the laws of France, or of Eng- 
land ? Or is ii to be decided by your own laws, by your own rules of judica- 
ture? If by the latter, then there is no good ground for controversy. We do 
not advocate tliat any country shall empty its poor houses, get rid of the duty 
of supporting its paupers, and throw that charge upon us. We could not 
permit anv country to empty its prisons and penitentiaries to mingle that por- 
tion of its population with ours. But we do war against the use of terms that 
delude the people, and are intended to exclude the high-spirited and hard-work- 
ing men who contribute to the bone, the sinew, and the wealth of our country. 
[Applause.] 

Such, then, my friends, is the opposition to the democracy, the only national 
party. The opposition, I say, claims two things from the federal government, 
neither of which it bus the constitutional power to perform. It agitates this 
section of the Union in relation to property which it has not, and of which, I 
say, it knows liteiallv nothing. For had the orator (Mr. Giddings) who was 
quoted to-night, known anything ol the relations between the master and the 



43 

slave, he would not have talked of the slave armed with the British bayonet. 
Our doors are unlocked at night ; we live atnonir them wilh no more Tear of tliem 
than of our cows and oxen. We lie down to sleep trusting to them for our 
(jpfpnce, and the bond between the master and the slave is as near as that winch 
exists between capital and labor anywhere. Now, about the idea of British 
bayonets in the hands of slaves : The delusion which has always excited my 
surprise the most has been that which has led so many ot the northern men 
to strike hands with the British abolitionists to make war on their soutliern 
brethren. If they could effect their ends, and Great Britain could insert the 
wedge which should separate the States, what further use would she have ibr 
the northern section ? You are the competitors of Great Britain in tlie vast 
field of manufacture, whom she most fears, and though she may be with you in 
the scheme which would effect a separation of these Slates, yet the moment that 
separation should be effected she would be under the promptings of interest 
your worst enemy. [Applause.] Our fathers fought and bled to secure the 
common interests of the coimtry. They reclaimed us from colonial bondage 
to national independence. They stamped upon it free trade in order that the 
interests of all might be promoted, that each section might be interwoven with 
the other — in order that there might be the strongest bond of mutual depen- 
dence. And step by step, from that day to this, that common and mutual 
dependence has been growing. 

From the seeds of narrow sectionality and purblind fanaticism, have sprung 
the tares which threaten the principles of that declaration which made the 
Colonies independent Stales, and of that compact by which the States were 
united by a bond to-day far more valuable than when it was signed. You have 
among you politicians of a philosophic turn, who preach a high morality ; a 
systern of whicli they are the discoverers, and it is to be hoped will long remain 
the exclusive possessors. They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, the 
Bible inculcates that; but there is a higher law than those, and call upon you 
to obey that higher law, of which they are the inspired givers. [Laughter and 
applause.] Men who are traitors to the compact of their fathers — men who 
have perjured Ike oaths they have themselves taken — they who vvisli to steep their 
hands in th^ blood of their brothers; these are the moral law-givers who pro- 
claim a higher law than the Bible, the Constitution, and the laws of the land. 
This higher-law doctrine, it strikes me, is the most convenient one I ever heard 
of for the criminal. You, no doubt, have a law which punishes a man for 
stealing a horse or a bale of goods. But the thief would find niore convenient a 
higher law which would justify him in keeping the stolen goods. The doctrine is 
now advanced to you only in its relation to property of the Southern States, thus it 
is the pill gilded, to conceal its bitterness; but it will re-act deeply upon yourselves 
if you accept if. What security have you for your own safety if every man of 
vile temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a higher 
law than that which is the rule of society, the Constitution, and tlie Bibie? 
These hiu:her-htiv preachers should be tarred and feathered, and ichij>i>ed hi^ those 
they have thus insliirated. litis, my friends, is what was called in <-;ood old revo- 
lutionary times. Lynch Law. It is sometimes the very best law, because it deals 
summary justice upon those who would otherwise escape from all oth<^r kinds 
of punishment. The man who with sycophantic face and studied phrase, and 
with assumed i)hilosophic morality, preaches treason to the Constitution and the 
dictates of all human society, is a fit object for a Lynch law that would be higher 
than any he could urge. [Applause.] , • , • 

My democratic friends, I am deeply gratified by the exhibition which is 
before me. I see here a field of flices, assembled in the name of Democracy, 
and over it high.briglit and multiplied for the occasion, as stars have been added 
by Democracy to the flag of our country, blaze the lights which typily dem- 
ocratic principles, pointing upward, to guide our country to that haven of pros- 
perity which our fathers saw in the distant future, and which they left it lor 
their'sons to attain. If we are true to ourselves, true to the obligations which 
the Constitution imposes upon us, and if we are wise and energetic in the 
struggles which lie before us, our path is onward to more of national greatness 



44 

than ever ppople before possessed. We are held together by that two-fold gov- 
ernment, Avhich is susceptible of being made perfect in the small spheres of 
State limits, and capable of the greatest imperial power, by the combination of 
these municipal powers into one for foreign action. It is a form of government 
such as the wit of man never devised until our fathers, with a wisdom that 
approached inspiration, framed the Constitution, and transmitted it as a legacy 
to us. It devolves upon every one of you, to see that each provision of that 
Constitution is cordially and faithfully observed. If cordially and faithfully 
observed, the powers of hell and of earth combined can never shake the 
happiness and prosperity of the people of the United States. [Applause.] 
With every revolving year there will arise new motives for holding tena- 
ciously to each other. With every revolving cycle there will come new 
sources of pride and national sentiment to the people. Year after your flag 
will grow more brilliant, by the addition of fresh stars, recording the growth 
of our political family, and onward, over land and over sea, the progress 
of American principles, of human liberty illustrated, and protected by the 
power of the United States, will hold its Avay to a triumph such as the 
earth has never witnessed. [Applause.] On the other hand, what do we see? 
A picture so black that if I could unveil it, 1 would not in this cheery moment 
expose a scene so chilling to your enthusiasm, and revolting to your patriotic 
hearts. My friends, feeling that I have already detained you too long, 1 now 
return to you my cordial thanks for the kindness with which you have received 
me to-night. 



SPEECH BEFORE THE MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE. 

MississippiATvrs: Again it is my privilege and good fortune to be among you, 
to stand before those whom 1 have loved, lor whom I have labored, by whom 1 
have been trusted and honored, and here to answer (or myself. Time and disease 
have frosted my hair, impaired my physical energies, and furrowed my brow, 
but my heart remains unchanged, and its every pulsation is as quick, as strong, 
and as true to your interests, your honor, and fair lame, as in the period of my 
earlier years. 

It is known to many of you, that at the close of the last session of Congress, 
wasted by protracted, violent disease, I went, in accordance with medical 
advice, to the Northeastern coast of the United Stales. Against the opinion of 
my physician, I had nnnained at Washington until my public duties were 
closed, and then adopted the only course which it was believed gave reasonable 
hope for a final restoration to health — that is, sought a region where I should be 
exempt from the heat of summer, and from political excitement. 

In one respect at least, this accorded with my own feelings, for physically and 
mentally depressed, fearful that 1 should never again be able to perform my part in 
the trials to which Mississippi might be subjected, I turned away iiom my fellows 
with such feelings as the wounded elk leaves his herd, and seeks the covert, to 
die alone. Misrepresentation and calumny i'ollowed me even to the brink ol' 
the grave, and with hyena instinct would have pursued me beyond it. 

The political positions which I had always occupied, justified the expecta- 
tion that in New England 1 should be left in loneliness. In this I was disap- 
pointed ; courtesy and kindness met me on my first landing, and attended me to 
the time of my departure. The manifeslions of comity and hospitality, given by 
the generous and the noble, aroused the petty hostility of the more extreme of the 
Black Republicans, and their newspapers assailed me with the low abuse which 
for years 1 had been accustomed to receive at their hands. I had always despised 



45 

their malice and defied their enmity ; their assaults did not surprise me, but 
when I ibund them echoed in Southern papers, it did a-^tonish, I will confess, 
it did pain me, not for any injury apprehended to myself, but for its evil eti'ect 
upon the cause with which 1 was identilied. 

Was it expected that to public and private manifesiaiions of kindness by the 
people of Maine, I should return denunciation and repel their generous ap- 
proaches with epithets of abuse 1 If they had deserved such reproach, they 
could not merit it at my hands, A guest hospitably attended, it would have 
been inconsistent with the character of a gentleman, to have done less than 
acknowledge their kindness, and it was not in my nature to feel otherwise than 
grateful to them for the many manifestations of a desire to render pleasant and 
beneficial the sojourn of an invalid among them. But they did not deserve it, 
and I am happy to state as the result of my acquaintance with them, that we 
have a large body of true friends among them, men v/ho maintain our consti- 
tutional rights as explicitly and as broadly as we assert them, and who have 
performed this service with the foreknowledge that they were thereby to sacrifice 
their political prospects, at least, until through years of patient exertion they 
should correct error, suppress fanaticism, and build for themselves a structure 
on the basis ot truth, which had long been unwelcome and might not soon be 
understood. 

But there were other evidences oi' regard more valuable to me than exhibi- 
tions of personal kindness. Regard for the people of Mississippi, founded on a 
special attention to their history ; the gallant services of your sons in the field, 
were publicly claimed as property which Mississippi could not appropriate to 
herself, but which were part of the common wealth of the nation, and belonged 
equally to the people of Maine. Could I be insensible to such recognition of 
the honorable fame of Mississippi? No, the memory of the gallant dead, who 
died at Monterey and Buena Vista, forbade it. 

At a subsequent period, when in Massachusetts, one of her distinguished 
sons, (Gen. Gushing,) paid a compliment to the leat performed by tlie Mis- 
sissippi Regiment inchecking the enemies cavalry on the field of Buena Vista, 
one Black Republican newspaper denied the originality of the movement, and 
claimed it to have been previously peribrmed by an English regiment at Q,uatre 
Bras. This claim was unfounded; the service performed by the British Regi- 
ment having been of a totally different character and for a different purpose. — 
A Southern paper, however, has gone one step beyond that of the Massachu- 
setts paper, and denies the merit claimed for the service rendered by saying that 
it was the result of accident, growing out of the peculiar conformation ol' the 
ground on which the regiment rallied and that it was necessary for the safety of 
the regiment, being like the act of a man who leaps from a burning ship and 
takes the chance of drowning. 

If this only affected myself, I should leave it, like other misrepresentations, 
unnoticed, but it concerns the hard earned reputation of the regiment I com- 
manded. It affects the fame of Mississippi, and propagates an error which may 
pollute the current of history. 

We live in an age of progress, and it requires a progressive age to produce a 
military critic who siiould discover that a soldier deserved no credit ibr availirig 
himself of the accidents of ground. One half of the science of war consists in 
teaching how to take advantage of the irregularities of the ground on which 
military movements are to be made, or defensive works are to be constructed. 
The highest reputation of Generals in every age has resulted in their skill in mili- 
tary topography. The most marked compliment ever paid by one General to 
another, was that of Napoleon to Cassar, when he halted on his encampments 
without a previous reconnoisance. But the regiment did not rally as stated, for it 
had not been dispersed ; neither was their movement the result of their own neces- 
sity, or adopted ibr their own safety. They were marching by the flank, on the 
side of a ravine, when theenemy's cavalry were seen approaching. They could 
have halted on the side of the ravine, which was so precipitous that they would 
have been there as safe from a charge as if they had been in Mississippi. They 



46 

could have gone down into the ravine, and have heen concealed even from the 
sight of the cavalry. The necessity was to prevent the cavalry from pa^sincr to 
the rear of our line of battle, where they might have attacked, and probably 
carried our batteries, which were then without the protection of our infantry 
escort. It was our country's necessity and not our own Avhich prompted the 
service there performed. For this the regiment was formed square across the 
plain, and there stood motionless as a rock, silent as death, and eager as a grey- 
hound for the approach of the enemy, at least nine times, numerically, their 
superiors. Some Indiana troops were formed on the brink of the ravine with 
the right flank of the Mississippi Regiment, constituting one branch of what 
has been called the " V ". When the enemy had approached as near as he 
dared and seemed to shrink from contact with the motionless, resolute living wall 
which stood before him, the angry crack of the Mississippi rifle was heard, 
and as the smoke rose and the dust fell, there remained of the host which so 
lately stood before us but the fallen and the flying. The rear of our line of 
battle was again secured, and a service had been rendered which in no small 
degree contributed to the triumph which finally perched upon the banner of the 
United States. 

I am not a disinterested, and may not be a competent judge, but I know how 
I thought, and still believe, that your sons, given by you to the public service 
in the war with Mexico, have not received>,the full measure of the credit which 
was their due. They, however, received so much that we might be content to 
rest on the history as it has been written. But it constitutes a reason why we 
should not permit any of the leaves to be unjustly torn away. 

To return to the consideration of the less important subject, the misrepresen- 
tation of myself, I will again express the surprise I felt that when abolition papers 
were assailing me with a view to destroy any power which I might acquire to 
correct the error which had been instilled into the minds of the people of the 
North in relation to Southern sentiments and Southern institutions, that they 
should have received both aid and comfort from Souihern newspapers, and been 
bolstered up in the attempt to misrepresent my political position. When the 
charge was made, which was copied in Northern papers, that I had abandoned 
those with whom I co-operated in 1852, to produce a separation of the States, 
my friend, the editor of the Mississippian, seeing the misrepresentation of my 
position, and naturally supposing, as we had no discussion in 1852, the reference 
must have been made to the canvass of 1851, quoted from the resolutions of the 
State-Rights Democratic Convention, and from an address published by myself 
to the people, to show that my position was the reverse of that assigned to me. 
Before proceeding, I will advert to a reference which has been made to him, as my 
" organ." He is no more my " organ " than I am his. We have generally con- 
curred, I and have been able to understand and anticipate his positions as he has 
mine. I am indebted to him for many favors. He is indebted to me for noth- 
ing. As Democrats, as gentlemen, as friends, we occupy to each other the 
relation of exact equality. 

Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has been reiterated, 
and, as before, located in the year 18.52. It is known to you all that our discus- 
sions were in 1851. I then favored a convention of the Southern States, <hat 
"we misht take counsel together, as to the future which was to be anticipated, 
from the legislation of 18.50. The decision of the State was to acquiesce in the 
legislation ot that year, with a series of resolutions in relation to future encroach- 
ments. I submifted to the decision of the people, and have in good faith 
adhered to the line of conduct which it imposed. Therefore in 1852 there is no 
record from which to disprove any allegation, but you know the charge to be 
utterly unfounded, and charity alone can suppose its reiteration was innocently 
made. Neither in that year nor in any other, have I ever advocated a dissolution 
of the Union, or the separation of the State of Mississippi from the Union, 
except as the last alternative, and have not considered the remedies which lie 
within that extreme as exhausted, or ever been entirely hopeless of their success. 
I hold now, as announced on former occasions, that whilst occupying a seat in 
the Senate, I am bound to maintain the Government of the Constitution, and 



47 

in no mnnnerto work for its destruction; that the obligation of theoalh ofodice, 
Mississippi's honor and my own, require that, as a Senator of the United Slates, 
there should be no want of loyalty to the Constitutional Union. Whenever 
Mississippi shall resolve to separate from the Conl'ederacy, I will expect her to 
withdraw her representatives from the General Government, to which they are 
accredited. If I should ever, whilst a Senator, deem it my duty to assume an 
attitude of hostility to the Union, I should, immediately thereupon, feel bound 
to resign the office, and return to my constituency to iniorin them of tlie fact. 
It was this view of the obligations of my position, which caused me, on various 
occasions, to repel, with such indignation, the accusation of being a disunionist, 
while holding the office of Senator of the United States. 

I have been represented as having advocated " Squatter Sovereignty " in a 
speech made at Bangor, in the State of Maine. A paragraph has been pub- 
lished purporting to be an extract from that speech, and vituperative criticism, 
and forced construction have exhausted tiiemselves upon it, with deductions 
which are considered authorized, because they are not denied in the paragraph 
published. 

Jn this case, as in that of the charge in relation to my position in 1852, there 
is no record with which to answer. 1 never made a speech at Bangur. And a 
fair mind would have sought for the speech to see how far the general context 
explained the paragraph, before indulging in hostile criticism. 

Senator Douglas, in a speech at Alton, adopting the paragraph published, 
and evidently drawing his opinion from the unfair construction which had been 
put upon It, claims to quote from a speech made by me at Bangor, to sustain 
the position taken by him at Freeport. He says : 

" You will find in a recent speech, delivered by that able and eloquent statesman, 
Hon. Jefferson Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took ihe same view of this subject 
that I did in my Freeport speech. He there said :" 

" ' If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police 
regulations as would give security to their property and iiis, it would be, rendered 
more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holdinjj it without such pro- 
tection. In the case of property in the labor of a man, or what is usually called 
slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily 
retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy Ijeinsr withheld, it 
would follow that the owner would be practically debarred, by the circumstances of 
the case, from taking slave property into a Territory where tiie sense of the inhabi- 
tants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forc- 
ing slavery upon any community.' " 

It is fair to suppose, if the Senator had known where to find the speech from 
which this extract was taken, that he would have examined it before proceeding 
to make such use of it. And I can but believe, if he had taken the paragraph free 
from the distortion which it had undergone from others, that he must have seen 
it bore no similitude to his position at Freeport, and could give no countenance 
to the doctrine he then announced. He there said : 

" The next question Mr. Lincoln propounded to me is: ' Can the people of a ter- 
ritory exclude slavery from their limits by any fair means, before it comes into the 
Union as a State .?' I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a 
hundred times, on every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion, the people of a terri- 
tory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery before it comes in as a State. [Cheers.] 
Mr. Lincoln knew that I had given that answer over and over again. He lieardme 
argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State, in lb54, and 'Sf), and ',56, 
and he has now no excuse to pretend to have any doubt upon that subject. What- 
ever the Supreme Court may hereat'ter decide as on the abstract question of whether 
slavery may go in under the Constitution or not, the people of a territory have 
the lawful means to admit or exclude it as they please for the reason that slavery 
cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless sup[iorted by local police regulations, 
furnishing remedies and means of enforcing the right of holding slaves. Those local 
and police regulations can only be furnished by the local Legislature. If the people 
of the Territory are opposed to slavery they will elect members to the Legislature 
who will adopt unfriendly legislation to it. If they are for it, they will adopt the 
legislative measures friendly to slavery. Hence no matter what may be the decision 



48 

of the Supreme Court, on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make 
it a slave territory or a free territory, is perfect and complete under the Nebraska 
Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln will deem my answer satisfactory on this point." 

This is the distiact assertion of the power of territorial legislation to admit or 
exclude slavery : of the first in the race of migration who reach a territory, 
the coaimon property of the people of the United States to enact laws for the 
exclusion of other joint owners of the territory, who may in the exercise of 
their equal right to enter the common property, choose to take with them pro- 
perty recognized by the Constitution, but not acceptiibie to the first emigrants to 
the Territory. That Senator had too often and too fully discussed with me the 
question of "' squatter sovereignty" to be justified in thus mistaking my 
opinion. The difference between us is as wide astliatof one who should assert 
the right to rob from him who admitted tlie power. It is true, as I stated it at 
that time, all property requires protection Irom the society in the midst of which 
it is held. This necessity does not conlier a right to destroy, but rather creates an 
obligation to protect. It is true as I stated it, that slav^e property peculiarly 
requires the protection of society, and would ordinarily become valueless in the 
midst of a community, which would seek to seduce the sfave from his master, 
and conceal him whilst absconding, and as jurors protect each other in any suit 
which the master might bring i'or damages. The laws of the United States, 
through the courts ot the United States, might enable the master to recover the 
slave wherever he could find him. But you all know, in such a community as 
I have supposed, that a slave inclined to abscond would become utterly useless, 
and that was the extent of the admission. 

The extract on which reliance has been placed was taken from a speech 
made at Portland, and both before and after the extract, the language employed 
conclusively disproves the construction, which unfriendly criticism has put 
upon the detached passage. Immediately preceding it, the following language 
was used : 

" The Territory being; the common property of States, equals in the Union, 
and bound by the Constitution which recognizes property in slaves, it is an abuse of 
terms to call aggression the migration into that Territory of one of itsjoint owners, 
because carrying with him any species of property recognized by the Constitution of 
the United States. The Federal Government has no power to declare what is pro- 
perty enywhere. The power of each State cannot extend beyond its own limits. 
Asa consequence, therefoi-e, whatever is property in any of tlie States, must be so 
considered in any of the territories of the United States until they reach to the dig- 
nity of community independence, when the sulject matter will be entirely under the 
control of the people, and be determined by their fundamental law. If the inhabi- 
tants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as 
would give security to tlieir property or to his, it would be rendered more or less 
valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it without such protection. In 
the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, 
the insecurity would be so great thai the owner could not ordinarily retain it. There- 
fore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that 
the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from 
taking slave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed 
to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any 
community." 

And in a subsequent part of the same speech, the matter was treated of in 
this wise: 

" The South had, not asked Congress to extend slavery into the territories, and he in 
common with most other Southert) statesmen, denied the existence of any power to 
do so. He held it to be the creed of the Democracy, both in the North and the South, 
that the general government had no constitutional power either to estai>lish or pro- 
hilMt slavery anywhere ; a grant of jiower to do the one must necessarily have 
involved the power to do llie other. Plence it is their [lolicy not to interfere on the 
one side or the other, but protecting each individual m his constitutional rights, to 
leave every independent community to determine and adjust all domestic questions us 
in their wisdom may seem best." 



49 

In other speeches made elsewhere, in New England and in New Yort, 
the equality of the South as joint owners was declared and maintained, as 1 
had often done before the people of Mississippi and in the Senate of the United 
States when the subject was in controversy. The position taken by me in 1850, 
in the form of an amendment offered to one of the compromise measures of that 
year, was intended to assert the equal right of all property to the protection of 
the United States, and to deny to any legislative body the power to abridge that 
right. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case has fully sus- 
tained our position in the following passage : 

" If Congress itself cannot do this, (prohibit slavery in a Territory,) if it is beyond 
the powers conferred on the Federal Government — it will be admitted, we presume, 
that it could not authorize a territorial government to exercise them. It could confer 
no power on any local government established by its auihorily, to violate the provisions of 
the Conslitution. 

•' And if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the master in a slave; 
and makes no distinction between that description of property and other property 
owned by a citizen, no tribunal, acting under the autliority of the United States, 
whether legislative, executive, or judicial, has aright to draw such a distinction, or 
deny to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have been provided 
for the protection of private property against the encroachments of the govern- 
ment." 

At the time of the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it certainly was 
understood that the constitutional rights to take slaves into any territory of the 
United States should thenceforth be regarded as a judicial question ; and there- 
fore special provision was made to facilitate the bringing of such questions 
before the Supreme Court of the United States. After the decision to which 
reference has just been made, the prominent advocate of the bill at the time of 
its enactment should have been estopped from recurring to his "squatter sov- 
ereignty" heresies, though the decision should have been different from his 
anticipation or desire. And as much interest has been felt in relation to his 
position, and some inquiry has been made as to my view of it, I will here say, 
that I consider him as having recanted the better opinions announced by him in 
1854, and that I cannot be compelled to choose between men, one of whom 
asserts the power of Congress to deprive us of a constitutional right, and the 
other only denies the power of Congress, in order to transfer it to the territorial 
legislature. Neither the one nor the other has any authority to sit in judgment 
on our rights under the Constitution. 

Between such positions, Mississippi cannot have a preference, because she 
cannot recognize anything tolerable in either of them. 

Having called your attention to the speech made at Portland, to show that 
other parts of it disprove the construction put upon the paragraph, which was 
taken from it, and reported to be a part of the speech delivered at Bangor, it 
may be as well on this occasion to state the circumstances under which the 
speech was made at Portland. Immediately preceding the State election, I was 
invited, by the democracy of that city, to address them, and my attention was 
especially called to a delusion practiced on the people of Maine, by which many 
were led to believe that there was a purpose on the part of the South, through 
the government of the United States, to force slavery not only into the terri- 
tories, but also into the non-slaveholding States of the Union. It was repre- 
sented to me that in the last Presidential canvass that pne of the Senators of 
Maine had convinced many of the voters that if Mr. Buchanan should be 
elected, slavery would be forced upon Maine, and that the other Senator was 
arguing that the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had given auihorily 
to introduce and hold slaves in that State. To counteract such impressions, 
injurious to the South and her friends, the remarks which have been extracted 
were made. 

On that, as on other occasions, it was deemed a duty to correct misrepresen- 
tation and seek to vindicate our purposes from the prejudice which ignorance 
and agitation had created against us. If it was in my power in any degree to 
allay sectional excitement, to cultivate sounder opinions and a more fraternal 
4 



50 



feelin., it was a task n.ost acceptable to me -^^^-J^^SlTeToTthe 
which'l could not doubt your ^ova^- Bmt has been ^j^ ^ ^^^ ^^^^^.^^^ 

object of a malice which I have "^^^'^.^^.^.X^jP^ by me. The land swarms 
thit it rested upon no injury °';^^"J"^^7brttr agents or their friends, or by 
with Presidential candidates, anno^^^^f^ ^J tlyeuxlg too zealous and partial 
themselves, as the mode most available lor ^even ^ ^^^^^^ ^j 

Iriends from putting ^l-^ri went T the la t Tf New England, instead o 

resentation to do Us work in "^^ ^.''^^"J^'.^rou-h the world bearing a personal 
For the wretch who ^\'^^°^''\XSl;l2rX\minc^pM^ 

^.!^^-!^:!o-t ;q^nuS :^§ own br as. ^^ ^^.^^^^^ 

But long have I delayed what is my ^h-ef purpos^, ^^ P j ,^ ,he ap- 

the men whose good opinion is '« ^ ^^ ^X^ ^ n"sunders,ood me, it is 
proval of my own conscience ooia^ as ^hey ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ To 

a pleasure to set forth the true "leanmg ot nou y , j^^ ^^^ ^^y one. 

4 traducers I have no explanation. « ^ff^^f'^^^;^ ,,l^-^ ,,,e, 1 have no 
If State Rights men in ^he excess of their zeain ^^ ^_^^p^^^^ 

eproaches^or them, but cheerfully b a ^e ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ been devoted, 
upon me by zeal in the ^^'if^^^l'^.g'^J.e Rights Democracy ol M.ssis^ 

-JiTbld been as.ea what interp^ta^onmight^^^ 

lished sketch of the remarks ";^.^^«^^y ™bXe Tt would have occurred to me 
speculation woulcl have been exhausted b^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^.^^^^ ^„j,r the 

that my State Rights friends would ^o"^'^^'' "Llieve that the country would 
head of " tr.fl.ng P^'f .^-"^ ' ^.^fl^L^ it had e'^.tly been on the occasion 
remain united to repel '"suit o ou ^fl^'\^ ^ulf of Mexico, under the 
of the attempt to exercise ^l^'^^^";' ;;'^;^J;" The publisher of that sketch has 
nretexi of checking the Airican slave trade, n v language I could 

Sfready announced that it was not a re^K>rt, a d that^io^r t^^ ^^^.^ .^^^^^ 
not ju.tly be considered -PO 'bl -^ Jo^th .^ .^ ^.^^^ ^^^^^..^.^ 

Snry^hos?;hVrstrued i^ ^e^ore such denial was ma e.^^ ^^^ 

Duuls the period of g-^^^^f „^^^",7,; ",0 "orn^ain ol' my fealty. We 
the State Rights Democracy had "o cause to t v ^ ^^^ indebted for 

Itru-led together, fell together, rose to?f ^er,^^^^ Endeared to me by our 
Xlever of consideration or P^X he' eaTfast support with which they 
common suffering; grateful ^^Z ^^^ ;;;i'b pnde to my ulenti-y with them, 

upon them. , , _ , .■ „ accusations of others who sought to 

■^Often it has been niy duty to '•^^Ij^^J^-'J,',^^^ .,01 their own, and to impute 
attribute to the State Oughts Denver y opm on ^^ ^^^^ government we in- 
to them the purpose to Jf'fj^^^b^s party deny that the language published 

^Z:^Z^, :K1 'l^Sil "S;^^^ at hie! and daily more and 
more r'espected in the other States ^^jj ^^bo were meant. 



51 

peace and proclaimins: that slavery is so great an evil, that the preservation 
of the Union is subordinate to the purpose of abolishing it. They who object 
to any protection, on the high seas or elsewhere, being given to slave property 
by the government of the United States; who would rejoice in any insult 
offered to the national flag if borne by a vessel sailing from a Southern port; 
and who have been for some time back circulating petitions for a dissolution 
of the Union on the ground of the incompatibility of the sections. And to 
these may be added the few, the very few of Southern men who fancying that 
they would have advantages out of the Union which they cannot possess 
within it, hov/ever fully the compact should be observed and State Equality 
maintained, desire its dissolution, and taking counsel of their passions, deery 
the labors of all who seek to preserve the government as our fathers formed 
it, and to develope the great purposes for which it was ordained and established. 

The other phrase which has been the subject of comment was, "and this 
great country will remain united." How "united" is set forth in the 
language to which this clause was a conclusion, "united to protect our 
national flag whenever a foreign power, presuming on ourdomestic dissention, 
should dare to insult it." The unanimity with which men of all parties in 
the two houses of Congress rallied to support the executive in maintaining the 
rights of our flag, had been the subject of my comniendation. Upon that fact 
the idea expressed rested. At worst it could but have evinced too much 
credulity, and I trust I may die believing that whenever the honor of our flag 
shall demand it, every mountain and valley and plain, will pour forth their 
hardy sons, and that shoulder to shoulder they will march against any foreign 
foe which shall invade the rights of any portion of the United States. 

And here permit me as a duty to you, and an obligation upon myself, to 
pay the tribute which I believe to be due the Northern Democracy. Having 
formed my opinion of them upon insufficient data, I have had occasion, after 
much intercourse with them, to modify it. I believe that a great reaction has 
commenced ; how far it will progress I do not pretend to say, but am hopeful 
that agitation will soon become unprofitable to political traders in Now Eng- 
land, and this hope rests upon the high position taken by the Nothern De- 
mocracy, and upon the increased vote which in some of the States, under the 
more distinct avowal of sound principles, their candidates have received. You 
may now often hear among them not only the unqualified defence of your 
constitutional rights, but the vindication of your institutions in the abstract, 
and in the concrete. 

In the town of Portland, just preceding the election, a Democrat of large 
means and extensivelv engaged in commercial transactions and city improve- 
ments addressed the Democracy, arguing that their prosperity depended upon 
their connection with countries, the products of which v/ere dependent upon 
slave labor; and the future growth and prosperity of their city depended upon 
the extension of slave labor into all countries where it could be profitably em- 
ployed. He showed by a statistical statement the paralysing effect which would 
be produced upon their interest by the abolition of slavery. The Black Re- 
publican papers of course abused him, and compared him to Davis and Toombs, 
but his sound views were approved by the Democracy, and so far as 1 could 
judge, he gained consideration by their manly utterance. 

A generation had been educated in error, and the South had done nothing in 
defence of the abstract right of slavery. Within a few years essays have been 
written, books have been published, by northern as well as by southern men, 
and with the increase of information, there has been a subsidence of prejudice, 
and a preparation of the mind to receive truth. Our friends are still in a 
minority. It would be vain to speculate as to the period when their position 
will be reversed. Whether sooner or later, or never, they are still entitled to 
our regard and respect. A few years ago those who maintained our consti- 
tutional right, and to secure it voted for the Kansas and Nebraska bill, went 
home to meet reproach and expulsion from public employment. 

Even their social position was affected by that political act. The few years, 
however, which have elapsed, have produced a great change. They have 



52 

recovered all except their political position. That bill which was considered 
when it was enacted, a Southern measure, for which Northern men bravely 
sacrificed their political prospects, has of late been denounced at the South asi 
a cheat and a humbug. A poor return certainly, to those wlio conscientiously 
maintaining our rights, surrendered their popularity to secure what the men 
for whom they made the sacrifice now pronounce to have been a cheat. It is 
true that bill has recently received in some quarters a construction which its 
friends did not place upon it when it was enacted. But it should be judged by 
its terms and by contemporaneous construction. 

When I visited the people of Mississippi last year, the question of greatest 
public excitement, was connected with the action of the Executive in relation 
to the admission of Kansas as a Stale of the Union. You had been led to 
suppose that the President would attempt to control the action of the conven- 
tion, and if the constitution was not submitted to a popular vote, would oppose 
by all the means within his power, the admission of the Stale within the 
Union. You were also excited at a dogma which had been put forth, to the 
effect that no more slave States should be admitted. I agreed with you then, 
that if the President took such position he would violate the obligations of his 
office, and be faithless to the trust which you had reposed in him. I agreed 
with you then, that the exclusion of a State, because it was slaveholding, 
would be such an offence against your equality as would demand at your 
hands the vindication of your rights. What has been the result'? The con- 
vention framed the constitution, submitted only the clause relating to slavery 
to a popular vote, and applied for admission. The President in his annual 
message referred in favorable terms to the application, then not formally made, 
and when the Constitution reached him transmitted it to Congress with a 
special message, in which he fully and emphatically maintained the right of 
admission. 

After the convention had adjourned, Mr. Stanton, acting Governor of the 
Territory, called and extra session of the Freesoil Legislature, which has been 
elected, and it passed an act to submit the whole constitution to a popular vote. 
The President removed him from office, — a further evidence of the sincerity 
with which he was fulfilling your expectations in relation to Kansas. And it 
gives me pleasure here to say of him, what I am assured I can now say with 
confidence, that he will not shrink a hair's breadth from the position he has 
taken, but will move another step in advance, and fall, if fall he must, man- 
fully upholding the rights and defying the insolence of ill-gotten power. 

When the bill was presented to the Senate for the admission of the Slate of 
Kansas, afier a long discussion, it was adopted, with a provision which re- 
quired the State after admission to relinquish its claim to all the land asked for 
in its ordinance, except 5,000,000 acres, that being the largest amount which 
had been ever granted to a State at the period of its admission. There was 
also a provision declaratory of the right of the people to change their consti- 
tution at any time ; though the instrument itself had restricted them for a term 
of years. I considered both those provisions objectionable; the first, because 
it was directory of legislation to be enacted by a State ; and the second, because 
it was inviting to a disregard of the fundam.ental law, and had too much the 
seeming of a concession to the anti-slavery feeling which was impatient for a 
change of the constitution. That bill failed in the House, and was succeeded 
by a bill of the Opposition which recognized the right of Kansas to be admiiied 
with a pro-slavery constitution, provided it should be adopted by a popular 
vote. This also failed, and in the division between the two Houses, a com- 

As there has been much diversity of opinion in relation to that law, and I 
think much misapprehension as lo its character, I will be pardoned for speak- 
ing of it somev/hat minutely. 

When it was known that the Conference Committee had prepared a bill, I 
mittee of conference was appointed, which framed the bill that became a law. 
being at the time confined to my house by disease, invited my colleague and 
the Representatives from the State lo visit me, that we might confer together 
and decide upon the course which we would pursue. Before the evening of 



53 

our meeting, a distinguished member of the House of Representatives, a 
member of the Committee, called and read to me the bill which they had 
prepared. It contained some features which I considered objectionable. He 
concurred with me, and promised to use his efforts to have them stricken out. 
When the JVliss-issippi delegation assembled, our conference was full, and 
marked by the desire, first to protect the rights of our State, and secondly, to 
secure unanimity of action by its delegation. The objections which were 
urged, referred, as my memory serves me, entirely to the features which I had 
reason to hope would be stricken out. One of the delegation announced an 
unwillingness to support the proposed modification of the Sen ite proposition, 
lest it should be considered as yielding the point on which we had insisted 
that Congress could not require the Constitution to be submitted to a popular 
vote. I refer to the lamented Gtuilman, whose smcere devotion to Southern 
interests, no one, who knew him, could question. 1 regretted that he deemed 
It necessary to vote, finally, against the measure, but I honor the motive 
which governed his course. 

The "ordinance which was attached to the Constitution, was not a part of 
it, but a condition annexed to the application for admission. If Congress had 
stricken the ordinance out, the effect, I believe, would have been that of 
admitting the State without any reservation of the public land ; would have 
transferred as an attribute of sovereignly the useful as well as the eminent 
domain. The Southern Senators who received the soubriquet of Southera 
ultras, held that position in 1850, in relation to the public lands of California, 
and it constituted one of their objections to the admission of that State at 
the time it was effected. To modify the ordinance, that is to change the con- 
dition on which the inhabitants of Kansas proposed to enter into the Union 
was necessarily to give them the right to withdraw their proposition. 

It remained then for Congress if they reduced the amount of land asked 
for in the ordinance, either to provide the mode in which the inhabitants should 
accept or reject the modification or leave them to do it in such manner as they 
might adopt. The convention was defunct, the legislature was black repub- 
lican and thought to be entitled to liitle confidence, and it seemed to be better 
that Congress should itself provide the mode of ascertaining the public Avill 
than leav'ethat duty to the territorial legislature, such as it was believed and 
proven to be. It was a mere question of expediency, and I think the best 
course was pursued. 

To have admitted the State without modification of the ordinance, would 
have been to grant five times as much of the public land as had ever been 
given to a State at the period of admission. 

There was nothing to justify such a discrimination, and otherwise the State 
could not be admtted without referring the question or violating the principle 
of State sovereignty. 

As a condition precedent, the general government may require the recog- 
nition of its right to control the primary disposal of the land, but can have no 
right to impose a condition with the mandate that it shall be subsequently ful- 
filled and no power to enforce the mandate if the State admitted should refuse 
to comply. Not for all the land in Kansas, not for all the land between the 
Missouri and the Pacific ocean, not for all the land of the continent of North 
America, would I agree that the federal government should have the power 
to coerce a State. 

The necessity for having all conditions agreed upon before the admission of 
a State was demonstrated by Mr. Soule, in"l850, in the discussiori. of the bill 
for the admission of California. Mr. Webster replied to him but did not 
answer his argument, and the course of events seems likely to verify all that 
Senator Soule foretold. 

Of the three methods which were supposable, I think Congress adopted the 
best ; it was the only one which was attainable and secured all which was of 
value to the South. It was the admission by Congress of a State with a pro- 
slavery Constitution ; it was the triumph of the principle that forbade Con- 
gress to interfere either as to the matter of the Constitution or the manner ia 
which it should be formed and adopted. 



64 

The refusal of the inhabitants to accept the reduced endowment offered to 
them, and their decision lo remain in a territorial condition, was, in my opin- 
ion, wise on their part and fortunate on ours. The late Governor, Denver, 
has forcibly pointed out to them their want of means to support a State gov- 
ernment, and the propriety of giving: their first attention to the establishment 
of order and the development of their internal resources. There were many 
reasons to doubt the fitness of the inhabitants of Kansas to be admitted as a 
Stale. 

The condition of the country and the previous legislation of Congress made 
the case exceptional, and, in my judgment, justified the course adopted. I 
have, therefore, no apology or regret to offer in the case. 

The Northern opponents of the measure have, among other denunciatory 
epithets, applied to it those of "bribery" and "coercion." "Bribery" to 
give less by twenty millions of acres of land than was claimed, and " coer- 
cion " to leave them to the option of receiving the usual endowment, or wait- 
ing until they had an amount of population which would give some assurance 
of their ability to maintain a State government. Though such is the require- 
ment of the law, and designed to secure exemption from the mischievous agi- 
tation which has for several years disturbed the country and benefitted only 
the demagogues who make a trade of politics, we may scarcely hope to escape 
from a renewal of the agitation which has been found so profitable. The next 
phase of the question will probably be in the form of what is termed an 
"enabling act," — a favorite measure with the advocates of "squatter 
sovereignty," who, claiming for the inhabitants of a Territory all the power of 
the people of a State, nevertheless consider it necessary that Congress should 
confer the power to form a Constitution and apply as a State. Congress has 
given authority for admission in some cases, but I think it better to avoid than 
to follow the precedent. Not that I am concerned for the doctrine of " squat- 
ter sovereignty," but that I would guard against the mischievous error of con- 
sidering the federal government as the parent of States, and would restrict it 
to the function of admitting new States into the Union, barring all pretension 
to the power of creating them. 

It seems now to be probable that the Abolitionists and their allies will have 
control of the next House of Representatives, and it may be well inferred 
from their past course that they will attempt legislation both injurious and 
offensive to the South. I have an abiding faith that any law which violates 
our constitutional rights, will be met with a veto by the present Executive. — 
But should the next House of Representatives be such as would elect an 
Abolition President, we may expect that the election will be so conducted as 
probably to defeat a choice by the people and devolve the election upon the 
House. 

Whether by the House or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosen Pres- 
ident of the United States, you will have presented to you the question of 
whether you will permit the government to pass into the hands of your 
avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for your answer, I will 
state my own position to be that such a result would be a species of revolution 
by which the purposes of the Government would be destroyed and the obser- 
vance of its mere forms entitled to no respect. 

In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should deem 
it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union with those who have 
already shown the will, and would have acquired the power, to deprive you 
of your birthright and to reduce you to worse than the colonial dependence of 
your fathers. 

The master mind of the so-called Republican party, Senator Seward, has in 
a recent speech at Rochester, announced the purpose of his party to dislodge 
the Democracy from the possession of the federal Government, and assigns as 
a reason the friendship of that party lor what he denominates the slave sys- 
tem. He declares the Union between the States having slave labor and free 
labor to be incompatible, and announces that one or the other must disappear. 
He even asserts that it was the purpose of the framers of the Government to 



65 

destroy slave properly, and cites as evidence of it, the provision for an amend- 
ment of "the Constitution. He seeks to alarm his auditors by assuring them 
of the purpose on the part of the South and the Democratic party to force 
slavery upon all the States of the Union. Absurd as all this may seem to 
you, and incredul6us as you may be of its acceptance by any intelligent por- 
tion of the citizens of the United States, I have reason to believe that it has 
been inculcated to no small extent in the Northern mind. 

It requires but a cursory examination of the Constitution of the United 
Stales ; but a partial knowledge of its history and of the motives of the men 
who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it is to ascribe to them the purpose 
of interfering with the domestic institutions of any of the States. But if a 
disrespect for that instrument, a fanatical disregard of its purposes, should ever 
induce a majority, however large, to seek by amending the Constitution, to 
pervert it from its original object, and to deprive you of the equality wliich 
your fathers bequeathed to you, I say let the star of Mississippi be snatched 
from the constellation to shine by its inherent light, if it must be so, through 
all the storms and clouds of war. 

The same dangerously powerful man describes the institution of slavery as 
degrading to labor, as intolerant and inhuman, and says the white laborer 
among us is not enslaved only because he cannot yet be reduced to bondage. 
Wher^ he learned his lesson, I am at a loss to imagine; certainly not by 
observation, for you all know that by interest, if not by higher motive, slave 
labor bears to capital as kind a relation as can exist between them anywhere ; 
that it removes from us all that controversy between the laborer and the capi- 
talist, which has tilled Europe with starving millions and made their poor- 
houses an onerous charge. You too know, that among us, white men have 
an equality resulting from a presence of the lower caste, which cannot exist 
where while men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The 
mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the 
African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all 
the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their 
position of absolute equality among us. 

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it 
should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the 
destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble 
minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual 
negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal 
government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if 
we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if 
it be through the process of revolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to 
say that no portion of the speech to which I have referred was received with 
more marked approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the senti- 
ment which has just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the 
past summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from 
the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern army should 
be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a 
battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own State, and 
one in whTch our friends claim that the victory will at least be doubtful. 

Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of Missis- 
sippi to be the last remedy— the final alternative. In the language of the ven- 
erated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the Union as a great though not 
the greatest calamity. I would cling tenaciously to our constitutional Govern- 
men°t, seeing as I do in the fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all 
and the fulfillment of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left 
it for their sons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than 
a filial aflfection. Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her military service. 
For many of the best years of my life I have followed that flag and upheld it 
on fields where if I had fallen it might have been claimed as my winding 
sheet. When I have seen it surrounded bv the flags of foreign countries, the 
pulsations of my heart have beat quicker with every breeze which displayed 



56 

its honored stripes and brilliant constellation. I have looked with veneration 
on those stripes as recording the original size of our political family and with 
pride upon. that constellation as marking tlie family's growth; I glory m the 
position which Mississippi's star holds in the group; but sooner than see its 
lustre dimmed — sooner than see it degraded from its present equality — would 
tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign 
round which Mississippi's best and bravest should gather to the harvest-home 
of death. 

As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago, so 
now do I urge you to the needful preparation to meet whatever contingency 
may befall us. The maintenance of our rights against a hostile power is a 
physical problem and cannot be solved by mere resolutions. Not doubtful of 
what the heart will prompt, it is not the less proper that due provision should 
be made for physical necessities. Why should not the State have an armory 
for the repair of arms, for the alteration of old models so as to make them 
conform to the improved weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture 
on a limited scale of new arms, including cannon and their carriages ; the 
casting of shot and shells, and the preparation of fixed ammunition? 

Such preparation will not precipitate us upon the trial of secession, for I 
hold now, as in 1850, that Mississippi's patriotism will hold her to the Union 
as long as it is constitutional, but it will give to our conduct the character of 
earnestness of which mere paper declarations have somewhat deprived us ; 
it will strengthen the hands of our friends at the North, and in the event that 
separation shall be forced upon us, we shall be prepared to meet the contin- 
gency with whatever remote consequences may follow it, and give to manly 
hearts the happy assurance that manly arms will not fail to protect the gentle 
beauty which blesses our land and graces the present occasion. 

You are already progressing in the construction of railroads which, whilst 
(hey facilitate travel, increase the products of the State and the reward of the 
husbandman, are a great element of strength by the means they afford for 
rapid combination at any point where it may be desirable to concentrate our 
forces. To those already in progress I hope one will soon be added to connect 
the interior of the State with the best harbor upon our Gulf coast. When 
this shall be completed a trade will be opened to that point which will produce 
direct importation and exportation to the great advantage of the planter as well 
as all consumers of imported goods ; and furnishing " exchange," will protect 
us from such revulsion as was suffered last fall when during a period of entire 
prosperity at home, our market was paralyzed by failures in New York. 

The contemplated improvement in the levee system, will give to our people 
a mine of untold wealth ; and as we progress in the development of our 
resources and the increase of our power, so will we advance in State pride 
and the ability to maintain principles far higher in value than mountains of 
gold or oceans of pearl. 

But I find myself running into those visions which have hung before me 
from my boyhood up; which at home and abroad have been the hope con- 
stantly attending upon me, and which the cold wing of time has been unable 
to wither. I am about to leave you to discharge the duties of the high trust 
with which you have honored me. I go with the same love for Mississippi 
which has always animated me; with the same confidence in her people, 
which has cheered me in the darkest hour. As often as I may return to you, 
I feel secure of myself, and say I shall come back unchanged. Or should the 
Providence which lias so often kindly protected me, not permit me to return 
again, my last prayer will be for the honor, the glory and the happiness of 
Mississippi. 



Mdrphy ft Co. Bookselleri, Publinhert, Printera, and Stationers, 182 Baltimore street, Baltimore. 



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